


return to ithaca

by Eliane



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, First Time, Happy Ending, M/M, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 05:03:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11960289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eliane/pseuds/Eliane
Summary: The world forgets. Roger and Rafa don't.





	return to ithaca

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, thank you (as usual) to [Marianna](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshiner/pseuds/sunshiner) for always going with my weird ideas even when in the middle of writing a dissertation. Glad we're gonna grow old & gay together. 
> 
> Thank you to Tish for being supportive as always. Hope you can read this while finding yourself in Thailand. <3 
> 
> Thank you to [TheLone Reader](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLoneReader/pseuds/TheLoneReader) & Marianna for being willing to go over this. I can't leave anything alone so all remaining mistakes are mine. 
> 
> A/N : This story primarily deals with two people who have been through a traumatic event and the ways they try to cope with it. I don’t think there is anything too explicit described that should warrant specific warnings except for some _mild body image issues_ but if you have questions you can always ask me. 
> 
> This is obvs a work of fiction and the characters’ actions stem from the (extreme) situation I put them in. As usual, it’s just me toying with an idea and seeing how far I can go with it. 
> 
> I started writing this around mid-july so as far as this story is concerned this is where it diverges from canon.
> 
> The title has nothing to do with the movie _Return to Ithaca_ , which I haven’t watched, and everything to do with my newfound obsession with Camus’ essay _Return to Tipasa_ and my longstanding obsession with the Odyssey. You can find _Return to Tipasa_ [ here ](http://oaksandcoulter.tumblr.com/post/56451975904/return-to-tipasa-albert-camus) in English. Sadly I couldn’t find a version in the original French. 
> 
> And finally enjoy!

Roger has a key to the house he’s never had to use. When he comes to stand in front of that door – twice a year, every year – there is a moment that stretches between him knocking and the door opening during which he wonders if this time will be the one the door stays closed. If he’ll have to get the key out of his jeans pocket where he always keeps it, the shape of it under his fingertips sometimes the one thing that can anchor him to this world, this reality, and enter an empty house.

But the door opens and Roger exhales. Not this time, then.

Rafa is standing in the entryway and smiles when he sees Roger, the cautious smile he so often seems to be wearing around Roger these days, as if the sight of him is both wounding and healing him. Roger doesn’t resent him; he understands the feeling all too well.

It doesn’t take Roger long to assess the few changes in Rafa’s physical appearance – most notably some more wrinkles here and there – before he moves on to the part of the visit he anticipates and dreads the most: hugging Rafa hello. He lifts his arm and his hand settles on the nape of Rafa’s neck, fingers curved, bringing them chest to chest. Roger’s head drops and he inhales slowly, taking in Rafa’s scent. It’s the one thing that never changes and it reminds Roger of a world that doesn’t exist anymore, that maybe never has. A world where people knew their names. He shuts his eyes and enjoys being as close to Rafa as he’ll ever allow himself to be. Then he takes a step back.

“Hey,” he whispers in greeting.

“Hey,” Rafa replies. His smile is a bit wider, a bit less cautious as if, now that he’s had time to adjust to Roger being there, he’s able to separate the pleasure he takes in Roger’s presence from the circumstances that lead Roger to his door twice a year. Roger has always envied that about him, this proficiency at not dwelling on what can’t be changed and trying to the best of his ability to work on what he can change. Which is, in this case, not much.

“Come in,” Rafa says. “The food is already cooking.”

“What is it this time?” Roger asks, barely a hint of apprehension colouring his voice.

Rafa used to stick to simple dishes in the beginning but he’s grown bolder with age, trying his hand at more experimental recipes, which did not always end well for Roger’s stomach. He would poke fun at Rafa if he didn’t have the nagging sensation that he’s Rafa’s only regular guest. It’s not something he wants to think about for too long. Before all that, Roger had never imagined that Rafa could be lonely. Now, looking at the pristine state of the house Rafa lives in all alone, so at odds with the lively mess he used to create wherever he went, Roger feels like his heart might break a little. So he focuses on following Rafa to the kitchen, his gaze glued to Rafa’s back, to the shirt clinging to his shoulders the way it used to after a match and – no.

No.

_It doesn’t have to be like this_ , his own fucking traitorous voice whispers to him while he leans against the kitchen counter, listening to Rafa describe a menu that might very well turn out to be the cause of Roger’s premature death. _You could stay_.

He could. Rafa would let him. Oh how would Rafa let him.

But Roger never does.

***

“What was the name of that last one?” Roger asks, gesturing toward his empty plate.

“Torta Caprese,” Rafa says. “Italian cake.”  

“That was incredible.”

“Yeah?” Rafa asks, a childlike kind of joy illuminating his features and almost reducing Roger to a dazed silence.

“Yeah,” he lets out.

“Maybe I do it again, then,” Rafa says. “Next time.”

“Hey, no,” Roger replies. “I want something new next time.”

Rafa shrugs, the joy evaporating from his face and Roger kind of hates himself. “Maybe if you come more,” Rafa starts but doesn’t finish. They both know how this conversation ends. Roger doesn’t feel guilty.

“Come on,” he says, trying to liven up the mood again, “let’s go see the sea, yeah? I haven’t seen it yet. I miss it.”

“No sea where you go?” This is familiar, non-dangerous territory: Rafa asking him about his travels.

“No,” Roger answers, shaking his head. “Only mountains, this time.”

“Ah.” Rafa hesitates before asking his next question. “Did you go to see...?”

“No,” Roger interrupts. Then, softer, “No, I didn’t.”

They don’t say anything else for a while, walking down to the sea in companionable silence. Roger has missed the sea, has missed the way it makes him feel. Insignificant. Not in the way he usually feels insignificant when he wakes up in the morning and must take a few moments before opening his eyes to remind himself that, in this world, no one except Rafa knows his name or who he is and no one ever will, no. The sea renders him insignificant but, at the same time, fuels him with the certainty that he belongs. That he is a part of this world, as nameless as he is. Rafa standing next to him, changed, aged, yet somehow still a fixed feature in his universe helps too.

“I love the sea because it does not change,” Rafa says in a quiet voice, echoing Roger’s thoughts with his own words.  “It does not care.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Roger agrees. He knows where this is going: they always end up having this conversation.

Roger sits down on the sand, not caring that it’s kind of damp and will cling to his clothes for the remainder of the night, and sighs. If it’s in relief that they’ve reached this point or something else entirely, he doesn’t know. Rafa follows his example and their shoulders brush. Neither of them moves. Above them, the sky is devoid of any moon. Everything is dark.

“Do you… Do you remember me?” Roger almost doesn’t stutter.

“I do.”

The conviction with which Rafa utters the words that have been said so many times between them that they’ve acquired a ritualistic quality is too much to bear and Roger closes his eyes before asking the rest.

“How? How do you remember me?”

And Rafa tells him. He uses that brilliant memory of his to tell Roger how he remembers him even though no one else does. He tells Roger what he looked like at the end of a gruelling point, after hitting a winner at what felt like a decisive moment, how he seemed to illuminate everything when he stepped out on a tennis court, even Rafa’s own mind. For once, Roger allows himself to listen to Rafa and to think about tennis, about a life he used to have and that is now forever out of his reach and not be hurt by it. He allows himself to bask in the memories, storing them all in the part of his mind dedicated to those evenings with Rafa, aware that he’ll go back to them again and again in the months to come, when he finds himself in a foreign city and forgets how to breathe, when he wakes up in the middle of the night in tears begging someone, anyone, for none of it to have happened.

When Rafa is done it’s Roger’s turn to speak, to let the memories flow between them and he has so many of them. Tonight, he chooses the ones that are the closest to his heart – Rafa smiling at him in a locker room long after they stopped meeting each other on the court every other Sunday, Rafa whispering in his ear, just for him, “better luck next time, no?”, the warmth of Rafa’s hand against his stomach, setting his exhausted body on fire.

Rafa’s hand comes to rest against his and brings Roger back to the beach, to the night. It’s not a question his hand is asking because Roger wouldn’t be able to say yes and Rafa couldn’t bear to hear no. It’s more of a reassurance. _I’m here, with you. I remember you_.

And isn’t it ironic that in this world where they are as anonymous as anyone could be it is the weight of this anonymity that is preventing Roger from doing what he wants, from kissing Rafa, holding him in his arms and never letting him go? But how can he, when he still hasn’t mourned what he used to be?

So they get up and walk back to the house and Roger goes to bed alone. In the morning, they’ll have breakfast and they won’t talk about the beach or the memories. They’ll talk about small things that will seem huge because it’ll be their last words to each other before Roger’s next visit, six months from now. This is what they’ve been doing for years and it works.

Truth is, everybody mourns differently. And although Rafa seems to have made his peace with this life and this world, it sometimes feels to Roger that he’s just at the beginning.

***

There are precise moments in everybody’s life, when one has the sensation that their world crumbles under their feet. Roger thought he’d had those moments, that he had lived through them and had even overcome them. But nothing could have prepared him for waking up on an ordinary morning only to discover that his world had done more than come crashing down: it had disappeared.

It’s not something he likes to think about often but seeing Rafa tends to revive those memories which is, in part, why they don’t see each other too frequently. On the plane bringing him back home for a few days before Roger decides where to flee next, he can’t sleep, can’t concentrate on the book he brought with him and can’t think about Rafa. It’s too soon and Roger misses him so much it makes it hard to breathe.

So he lets his mind drift back to that morning and it doesn’t matter that it’s been years, he still remembers how normal he had felt when getting out of bed and going down the stairs to the kitchen. Nothing had been amiss. He’d kissed Mirka good morning and sat down at the kitchen table and it’s only when he had asked about his practice schedule for the day that it all started going wrong.

“Practice?’ Mirka laughed. “What would you be practicing for?”

“Playing tennis,” Roger answered, disbelieving.

“Roger,” she said, in a tone that didn’t bode well. “You haven’t played tennis since you were injured.”

“Injured?” he repeated, trying to see if his body was in any kind of pain. It wasn’t. “I’m not injured. I’m having a great season.”

“No,” Mirka said and there was a hint of worry in her expression that filled Roger with dread. “You haven’t played tennis since you were injured when you were nineteen. Don’t you remember that?”

And that was it, that was the moment. The quietest apocalypse imaginable. Roger stared at her, whom he knew so well, who had accompanied him for so long, who had been there when he was at his highest and at his lowest, in victory and in defeat, and found himself looking at a stranger, someone he had never met before. Someone who was telling him something that didn’t make sense.

“Is it a joke?” he tried, even though he knew it wasn’t.

“Why would I be joking about this?” she huffed, annoyed. “I know how much it hurt you at the time. I was there, wasn’t I?”

“Yeah,” he said, too stunned to answer anything else. To scream or to protest. “I guess you were.”

What he didn’t say, what he wouldn’t have known how to say was: _I wasn’t. This didn’t happen to me_. Except, apparently, it had.

After this conversation, things are a bit of a blur. Roger doesn’t remember the following days, or weeks, in detail. He went through the motions, going where he was told he usually went, doing what he was told he usually did, all the while trying his best to keep his grip on reality intact. There was one thing he was sure of: in this world, he had never had a career as a professional tennis player. Had never won nineteen grand slams, or any. Had never knelt on the ground in victory.

Some things remained the same. He was still married to Mirka, still had his children – and god, he couldn’t imagine how he would’ve reacted if that hadn’t been the case – and a more than comfortable life. He wasn’t as rich as he used to be but he was richer than most, as if some things couldn’t be changed in fear of disrupting the careful balance of the universe. Which made no fucking sense because the one essential thing that had defined him for so long and that had, no point in being humble, defined the world of tennis, had vanished. Roger pointedly didn’t google what had happened in tennis for the past twenty years, couldn’t bear to see his name next to the word ‘injury’ or to see someone else’s name, someone he probably knew, where his should have been. He didn’t try to contact anyone from his tennis-related life, the time he was starting to think of as _before_. If the past fifteen years or so hadn’t happened then it meant he had never talked to them, never got to know them. He had to deal with this on his own.

No matter how hard he thought about it, though, none of it made sense to Roger and it felt like he was living on borrowed time and something would soon have to give.

And then there was the big question: what about Rafa? Was he still playing? Were all those titles Roger had fought so hard to win his?

Once, Roger gathered his courage and asked Mirka about him.

“So, is Nadal still playing tennis?”

They hadn’t broached the topic of tennis since that very first conversation and Mirka glanced up at him in surprise.

“Nadal?” she repeated. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that name.” 

“Oh,” was all Roger said.

After that, it was merely a question of time before Roger called Rafa’s number, hoping it was one of the things that hadn’t changed. Mirka was at her parents’ with the children and Roger sat alone in the garden, one glass of wine in front of him – just in case.

“Hello?” Rafa answered immediately and Roger let out a sigh in relief.

“Hey Raf’, it’s Roger. Roger Federer,” he breathed. “Do you… Do you remember me?”

“Of course I do,” Rafa answered. But that wasn’t enough, Roger needed more.

“No, I mean… Do you remember me?” he asked again, his tone getting more desperate.

“Roger, you beat me three times this year,” Rafa replied, a hint of _something_ in his voice. “I remember you.”

“Oh, thank God,” Roger uttered, closing his eyes, a weight he didn’t know he had been carrying lifted from his shoulders. “You’re the only one. Mirka, the kids… They’re still here but they don’t remember me, you know? They don’t remember anything related to tennis.”

“Yes, me too. No one remembers. They say I was injured, stopped playing. Like a nightmare.”

“What are we going to do?”

There was some noise on the other side of the line and Roger imagined Rafa shrugging.

“I don’t know. Maybe you should come, no? So we can talk.”

“I will,” Roger promised. “Maybe not immediately but I will.”

“Okay,” Rafa said, his relief palpable. “Okay. And we keep in touch, no?”

“Yes, sure. I’ll tell you when I can come, okay?”

“Yes. Goodnight, Rogelio.”

Roger hadn’t cried before, hadn’t shed a tear when his world had disappeared as quickly and irrevocably as water sipping through his fingers. Some events are too huge, too incomprehensible for that. It was this, Rafa’s soft voice, the old nickname, the reassurance that Roger wasn’t crazy, that something was _wrong_ , that broke him. He put his head in his hands and cried, hot, painful tears that were almost a scream. In his mind, one thought he kept repeating to himself, in case it could vanish too and leave him utterly bereft – _I am not alone, I am not alone, I am not alone_.

***

Roger’s flat is as he left it six months ago: cold, empty of furniture except for the basic ones, lonely. He bought it after the divorce but hasn’t stayed more than a few months in it over the years. Most of his time is spent travelling from one place to another, in search of something that keeps eluding him.

They had lasted five months, he and Mirka. Looking back, it’s a testament to how much they had loved each other that they had managed to make it that long. Roger was living a lie, yet he could see no way out of it. He couldn’t face Mirka and tell her that the person she thought he was no longer existed. It was one thing to live with that knowledge, to bear the burden of it every single day, and quite another to impart it on someone who didn’t deserve it. His world had shattered; should hers too?

So Roger did the only thing he could do: he tried making the best out of it. He put everything he had into loving this Mirka who wasn’t _his_ , loving his children and taking solace in their existence, putting together the broken pieces of his previous life and arranging them in a way that would be enough for him to be content. He quit his job which he, in all honesty, knew nothing about and told Mirka he needed to do some thinking, figure out what he wanted to do with his life. It was, maybe, the first true thing he had said to her in a very long while.

Yet, no matter how hard he tried, it wasn't enough. Because this wasn’t Roger’s life and this wasn’t who he was and every dream he had took the shape of a tennis court, the sound of balls flying still resonating to his ears when he woke up, gasping.

“Sometimes, I feel like I don’t know you anymore,” Mirka said one evening, in the aftermath of yet another not quite fight. In any other circumstances, it would have been a rather cliché remark, one that will be thrown between two people who have been together for so long that it becomes necessary to remind each other that time has passed and they’re not who they used to be. In this case, though, it was just true.

The divorce was a simple affair. Roger left everything he could to Mirka, guilt gnawing at his very limbs and promised her that he would stay near them, for the kids. He bought a flat and, one week later, was on a plane to Mallorca.

He hasn’t seen them since.

***

Roger finds a box of pasta, stashed away in a cupboard, and frowns. Well, it will have to do. He will do some shopping the day after or, as is so often the case, will end up ordering take-away. It’s not like it matters.

He overcooks the pasta and goes to bed hungry, dissatisfied and craving Rafa near him. It’s one of the things he hates the most: how little time it takes for him to become accustomed to Rafa’s presence again and how long it takes to stop missing it, if he ever does. There’s a physicality to Rafa that has always attracted Roger to him. Rafa had told him that Roger illuminated everything when he stepped out on a court but he had it all wrong – Rafa was the luminous one.

Roger’s cock feels heavy between his legs and, for one moment, Roger is tempted to give in. Just once. It’s been so fucking long since he was with anyone and he can still recall Rafa’s scent, the shape of his neck under Roger’s hand, the warmth of his skin. How their shoulders brushed. The smallest gesture from Rafa has always been able to make desire course through his veins and there was a time when Roger wasn’t so reluctant when it came to thinking of Rafa like that. When, in fact, it happened quite often. It wasn’t cheating, not when he so carefully kept a distance between them, and if he felt guilty, well. It had nothing to do with the kind of guilt that now overshadows every minute of his days. Roger sighs, turns around, trying to find a more comfortable position and grabs his pillow with both of his hands.

It had taken one text to Rafa – _Me and Mirka split up_. _Can I come?_ – and an answered _yes_ , followed by an address, for Roger to leave his newly bought flat behind him. He spent the flight fiercely glad that he had forbidden Rafa to come fetch him at the airport because he could feel himself on the verge of _something_ and if he must have an emotional breakdown he sure didn’t want it to happen in the middle of a crowd.

When Rafa opened the door to his house though, all the increasing anxiety Roger had felt building up inside him disappeared, replaced by a feeling he has no name for. Relief, yes, and happiness but, more than that, the sensation that things made sense again. Roger hadn’t realized how fragile his state of mind had become until he stood there, on a foreign land yet feeling at home for the first time in months. Rafa was alive and he was real and he was exactly as Roger remembered him. Tanned. Smiling. Beautiful.

They fell into a hug and Roger couldn’t help it, he let his hands roam across Rafa’s back, pressing Rafa hard against him, wanting to make sure that this wasn’t an elaborate dream. If Rafa minded, he didn’t say.

“I’m so glad I’m here,” Roger said, in the crook of Rafa’s neck.

“Yeah,” Rafa answered, his cheek brushing against Roger’s. “Me too.”

They stayed like this for what felt like a long time, unable to let the other go. Then, Rafa drew a shaky breath and took a step back.

“Come on,” he said. “I show you my house.”

So Roger let himself be guided across different rooms, too dazed to really pay attention to what Rafa was saying. It was enough to just hear him speak.

***

They were almost finished with dinner when Roger asked.  

“This is a new house, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Rafa answered.

There was a hint of reluctance in his voice that made Roger add, “I’m sorry. Maybe you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Is fine,” Rafa said. “But maybe we need wine for this, no? And the sea.”

Which is how they ended up at the beach for the first time of many, a bottle of wine precariously settled on the sand in front of them, each of them holding a plastic cup as if this were a beach party and they were teenagers, with nothing more to worry about than who they would get to kiss next. Roger kind of wished they were.  

“So,” Roger started after having drunk his glass. “The house?”

“Yeah, it is new,” Rafa answered. “The other one… Too many memories, no? But also, too many things missing. Trophies and pictures…” He sighed. “I could not stay there.”

“I get that,” Roger said. “I bought a new flat too, after the divorce. So, to a fresh start for us both huh?” He raised his cup in celebration although he’d never felt further from celebratory. Rafa indulged him and did the same.

“We don’t have a lot of choice, no?”

“I guess not. I wanted it to work, with Mirka. I wanted to still have this but it was a lie, you know? I wasn’t the person she had married and she wasn’t the person I had married. Marriage is hard enough without having to deal with stuff like that.”

“I’m sorry Roger,” Rafa said, putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing it in comfort. “At least that is not a problem for me.”

Roger didn’t reply. He knew, of course, it was hard not to in such a small circle as theirs, but they had never talked about it and it didn’t feel right to pry.

“There is your family, though. Your uncle… It must be hard.”

“It is,” Rafa acknowledged. “Maybe this is why I buy the new house too, no? With Toni… We talk and he looks at me but he does not see me. Not anymore.”

“It’s strange, isn’t it? You think that people know you and that they love you no matter what, because they’re your family, your blood, but you take away one thing and it all collapses. Maybe we’re dominos. Or no, not dominos. Houses of cards.”

“Houses of cards?”

“Yeah, you know? You put cards on top of each other and if you retrieve one it all comes crashing down,” Roger explained, mimicking the process of building a card tower and its subsequent collapse with his hands. He was at his third glass of wine and everything was both dizzy and heavy. He had always been a bit of a lightweight.

“But you are still here,” Rafa said, as if that settled it. It didn’t and they both knew it. There were thousands of questions neither of them had the answers to. Why did this happen to us? What did happen? Is this forever?

“Yes,” Roger said instead. “I am.”

“I’m glad,” Rafa said, voice soft and genuine.

_I’m glad it’s you too_ , Roger wanted to reply but he wasn’t sure how to convey it in a way that wouldn’t disparage all the other people he had lost. He didn’t have Rafa’s inherent candidness when it came to that sort of thing, the words he spoke either too abrupt or too feeble for them to reflect what he meant.

The moon was illuminating the sky and the sand beneath Roger’s feet was dry. His thoughts circled back to how perfect it was, a night for drunken first kisses and giggles and confessions in the dark. Things that were so far out of his reach they might as well not have existed.

Roger lay back on the sand, a lump in his throat.

“Roger, are you okay?” Rafa asked.

“Do you ever think,” Roger said, “about all the things you did for tennis? All the sacrifices and not only the big ones but the little ones. Spending entire summers training instead of, I don’t know, coming to this beach and getting drunk and doing all the things teenagers should do.”

“What should they do?”

“Well, you know. Kissing. Making mistakes. Regretting them the next morning and repeating them anyway. I wouldn’t know.”

Rafa laughed. “There was one summer, I had a lot of fun. Then I lost my tennis match and I thought I like winning more.” 

“But that’s it, isn’t it? We don’t have that anymore. Winning, people remembering we won. It’s all gone. And we still didn’t get drunk when we were sixteen.”

Rafa set his cup down on the sand and lay down next to Roger, his head turned toward him, staring at him intently.

“I remember,” he said.

“God, Rafa…”

“I remember,” Rafa repeated, as if it was the most important thing he’d ever said to Roger and maybe it was. “You want me to tell you?”

“Yes,” Roger breathed, tone shaky. “Please.”

So Rafa did.

***

This first visit lasted three weeks and it was Roger’s longest. Not that it was always easy, having Rafa near him. Sometimes looking at him was a relief, like it had been on the first day, reminding Roger that he was neither mad nor alone. Sometimes it was like being stabbed, the sight of Rafa so familiar, so intrinsically linked to tennis in Roger’s mind that he couldn’t prevent himself from reminiscing about all he had lost and had to escape Rafa and the house for some time. Rafa noticed Roger’s absences but never said a thing about them and, when it was Rafa’s turn to reappear after a few hours of being nowhere to be found, Roger didn’t question it either. In this, they understood each other perfectly.

Rafa didn’t have a job. Or, to be precise, he had quit the one that he had occupied here. He told Roger in a shrug that he didn’t like it and that he had enough money anyway to which Roger had nodded in acquiescence. He had done the same thing. In the weeks Roger was there, Rafa only went to see his family a few times. It was, well. Out of character to say the least, but Roger remembered Rafa’s face when they had talked about Mirka and Toni and thought better than bringing it up. There are only so many things one can endure before being forced to change, even if those changes go against everything you previously held dear.   

What hadn’t changed was this thing between them. This thing they had never acted on, had never even voiced out loud. They didn’t talk about it during Roger’s stay either but it was hard to ignore it when they lived together and spent most of their days together. It wasn’t the time, though, not when everything was still so fresh, just as it hadn’t been the time before, when they were on the tour and trying to win as many trophies as they could, when Roger had gotten married and started a family.

The thing was, Roger had never even named it in the privacy of his own mind. He had recognized the attraction and acknowledged it because how could he not? But that had been the extent of it. It didn’t prevent him from fantasizing about it, dreaming about it. From wanting it so much at times he felt he could barely breathe. But he hadn’t given it a name. Maybe because he feared what that name would be. In any case, it wasn’t like Rafa was waiting for him. He had his own life, which Roger was very much aware of. It was fine.

The closest they came to talking about it was during Roger’s last evening at Rafa’s. The three weeks had passed in a blur of going out fishing, taking walks, reading, spending evenings on the beach and trying not to talk too much about the reason why they were both here. Not after that first night, at least. Roger was starting to think that he could stay like this forever, that maybe this way he could heal. Which was when he decided it was time to leave. He needed to figure this out for himself, not mould himself into Rafa’s life.

“What are you going to do?” Rafa asked. They had traded the beach for Rafa’s garden and the air was suffused with the scent of lilac and this specific smell that only exists near the Mediterranean. Burnt earth and pine trees.

“Travel, I think.”

“You are not tired of travels?”

“No,” Roger laughed. “I want to do it properly, you know? Like actually visit stuff, go to museums. Not just go from one hotel room to the other.”

“Okay,” Rafa said. “Sounds nice.”

“Yeah, I think it will be. I’ll send you postcards, if you want?”

“Sure,” Rafa smiled. “So I know you are still alive.”

“Hey, I’ll have my phone. I’m not disappearing,” and even though Roger meant it as a joke, it sounded more like a reassurance. A promise.

“Okay,” Rafa repeated, looking down at his hands resting on his thighs.

“I won’t disappear,” Roger said one more time. When Rafa didn’t reply he tried again, “Rafa, what is it?”

“You could stay,” Rafa said. “There is everything here, no? You could stay.”

Roger knew Rafa well enough to understand that this wasn’t just a fear of Roger vanishing in some foreign country, that it was more than dread at the idea of having to go back to living every day without the one person remembering who you were standing next to you. It was about them.

“I can’t,” Roger said in a soft voice, as if his tone could somehow diminish the hurt his words would cause. “I’m sorry. I swear I’ll come back in… in six months.”

It’s all he had to offer. He didn’t say _, I won’t leave you alone_ , because he was. But there was this: the certainty that he’d be back.

Rafa nodded. “I want to give you something.”

“A present?” Roger asked, accepting the change of topic.

“No,” Rafa answered, searching for something in his jeans pockets. “Here,” he said, reaching toward Roger and dumping a small metallic object in his hands. “A key for the house. So if you want to come and I am not here you can come in, no?”

“Rafa…” Roger started but he couldn’t find the words to express how glad he was. That Rafa existed, that he was here. That his generosity was so much more than Roger could have ever hoped for. “Thank you,” he said.

They said goodbye the day after and it’s a funny thing, Roger thought on the plane taking him back home, how there is no limit to the number of times a human heart can break.

***

Those first six months of travelling were ones of many discoveries. First, Roger was _terrible_ at travelling on his own. He hadn’t done his own booking in more than a decade and realized that it wasn’t as easy as it seemed, not when he was looking for relatively cheap accommodations anyway. He did have money but he didn’t have a job and no intention of taking one anytime soon, not when he had no idea what he was going to do with the rest of his life, so he had to be careful with his expenses. In the beginning, he booked hotels that looked nice enough without being too expensive but, after a few incidents – including the one time he had to move hotels in the middle of the night– he learnt to always check the customers’ reviews before booking anything. He also discovered the joys of travelling on overbooked commercial flights, the endless delays and the sudden cancellations. All that, though, was nothing compared to how he felt after his first three days spent in Granada.

Walking all day long, Roger learnt, fucking _hurt_. Was it even normal for his feet to hurt that much? Sure, he was a bit out of shape but that wasn’t enough to explain why he felt like he would be better off with wheels instead of feet at the end of his legs. Lying down on his uncomfortable bed in his rather bland hotel room, he wondered if he shouldn’t jump on the first plane flying back to Switzerland, or Mallorca, and be done with it. Done with this stupid idea of seeing the world, done with this soul-searching that had so far only brought him blisters and done with this world. He could shut himself away in his flat and no one would ever know. Which was, of course, the crux of the matter.

Roger was nothing if not stubborn, though. The next morning, after a sleepless night, as soon as the shops opened, he bought three new pairs of shoes that, the salesperson assured him, were perfect for long walks. He also bought a travelling bag and practical, if a bit ugly, clothes.  Examining his reflection in the unflattering bathroom mirror of his hotel room, Roger barely recognized himself. He felt a pang of _something_ , inside his chest, a longing for simpler times before shaking himself out of it. The world had changed; why shouldn’t he?

So, Roger learnt. He learnt which companies to avoid if he wanted to reach his destination and which hotels to book to ensure that he would get a decent night of sleep. He learnt that at some point walking all day doesn’t hurt so much anymore, that the body adapts to it and it’s not so different from it being used to playing tennis for hours on end. He learnt how to find his way around foreign cities, to take one look at a map and memorize the main streets, to decipher if he could travel on foot or would have to buy a transport card. He learnt how to find the best places in a city, the dingy cafés no travel guide ever talked about yet where he could get a feel of the country he was in. After a while, he stopped sticking to cities and ventured into the countryside. There, he learnt some more.

Then, there were the things he discovered about himself. He found himself mostly indifferent to food, eating what he could when he could. Eating used to be a tool to keep his body in shape, it used to mean something.  Now, like most things, it had lost its sense of purpose to him. His appreciation of the passing of time changed. Instead of measuring it in terms of tournaments won or lost, he began to measure it in terms of places visited and months spent away from Rafa.

He kept his promise to Rafa and sent him postcards, whenever he wasn’t so exhausted that writing down a few lines was an almost impossible task. He didn’t check his phone often. Mirka called, in the beginning, and so did his parents before they all got tired of him never answering. Roger quenched any feeling of guilt and continued with his self-imposed exile. He had never been so lonely.

Adapting, it turns out, can be kind of devastating.

***

Roger wakes up to the beginnings of a headache. He stares at his blank ceiling, trying to convince himself that he’s home and not in a nondescript hotel room, somewhere on the other side of the world.

It always takes him some time to get reacquainted with his flat. It’s a bit strange to think of it as his: he’d never bothered with decorating it or making it into anything else than a utilitarian space. There are some traces of his presence: on the shelves of the living room books about cosmology, dating back from when he thought that science might have a rational explanation for his predicament. But scientists are apparently incapable of agreeing on one theory and even if they did and could prove that parallel universes existed, it wouldn’t explain why it had happened to _him_. Here and there, there are also trinkets he’s brought back from his travels. He likes buying gifts which he more often than not gives to Rafa but sometimes he will see something that will remind him of Mirka or his children and will buy it thinking _one day, maybe_. Other than those few things, there is nothing in the flat indicating that it’s Roger living here.

This time, it seems to take him even longer than usual to get used to the place. He wanders from room to room, trying to decide where he wants to go next and failing at it. His thoughts keep circling back to his last visit to Rafa, to the way he went through it like through the motions of some well-orchestrated event: waiting to see if he would have to use the key, hugging Rafa hello, having dinner, refusing to talk about the things they don’t talk about, allowing Rafa and himself to reminisce about their memories for a few precious minutes. The first time he had visited Rafa, right after the divorce, had set the pattern for those encounters and they never deviated from it. For years it had made sense – to Roger at least, he doesn’t pretend to know what’s going on in Rafa’s mind – but now he wonders. For how much longer?

One night, after a week of not knowing what to do with himself, Roger gives in and texts Rafa.

_I miss you_ , Roger sends and he’s not surprised when his phone starts vibrating a few minutes later.

“Hey Raf’,” he says.

“Roger,” Rafa replies, his voice this specific mix of soft and rough it always seems to acquire past midnight. “Still in Switzerland?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing?”

“Not much,” Roger laughs. “Passing the time. Trying to decide where to go next.”

There is a silence that none of them breaches for quite some time. Roger can picture Rafa in his bedroom, sitting on his bed, elbows resting on his knees, and chewing at his bottom lip. He imagines the words Rafa isn’t saying.

“Maybe you can go to Tenerife, no?” Rafa says after a while. “Beautiful island and you said you missed the sea.”

“Yeah,” Roger answers. “Why not?”

It’s not what either of them wanted to say. Sometimes, Roger thinks they dance around each other as carefully as two wounded animals, united in their pain yet unable to let go of the fear that the other might strike the fatal blow.

Sometimes, Roger dreams of surrendering.

“I miss you,” Roger says out loud, this time, and Rafa lets out a shaky sigh.

“I need to go,” Rafa says, and Roger doesn’t point out that it’s three in the morning and there is nowhere to go. “To sleep,” Rafa adds as if he could read Roger’s mind.

“Yeah, of course. I’ll send you a postcard from Tenerife, I guess?” He doesn’t intend for it to come out as a question but it seems that what he intends for rarely matters nowadays.

“Yes, please.”

“Goodnight Rafa.”

“Goodnight.”

Roger doesn’t sleep. He stays wide-awake and, instead of counting sheep, does his own kind of math. A bit more than four years since it happened, which means eight visits to Rafa, which means forty-two months spent travelling around the world. Depending on his mood it either seems short or an eternity. Tonight, it’s the latter. It’s not the years that have passed that are frightening him, though. It’s the ones that are still to come. And still this question – for how much longer can he and Rafa go on like this?

Roger isn’t stupid. He knows that the situation is wearing on Rafa too. It doesn’t matter how adept Rafa has always been at putting on a brave face when suffering, Roger could see right through it back then and he still can. This, playing at being some kind of Penelope to Roger’s rather mediocre Odysseus, it isn’t _him_. Roger can understand the comfort Rafa found in staying on his island, in this place he’s always loved so much but what does it mean when the things he used to value the most – his family, the people – aren’t part of his daily life anymore?

Maybe Rafa is better at hiding his pain than Roger but that doesn’t mean they’re not both pretending.

***

Instead of Tenerife, Roger goes to St Petersburg. It’s not the first time he’s been there but it’s the furthest thing from Mediterranean islands and cities and men within a four-hour flight distance he can think of and, in that, he is right. If he must be honest, he is tired of travelling. The days of self-discovery are long gone and he wants nothing more than to settle in one place and stay there. That’s not an option, though.

There is a driving force in some people. It’s not something that can be explained or acquired, it’s either there or it’s not. Roger used to believe that that’s what made the difference between champions and others, that need to always go further, to push oneself to the limit, to never feel content, but it’s not all there is to it. There is something darker about it, a relentlessness, a refusal to _give up_ that almost scares Roger at times.  No, it’s not a force found in champions. It’s one found in survivors.

So Roger goes to St Petersburg and he’s exhausted but it’s still a different place where to wake up and survive every day. He starts with the main landmarks and wastes a whole afternoon in the Hermitage trying to find the impressionist paintings. He doesn’t. He gets out of the museum disoriented and walks back up Nevsky Prospekt, trying to escape the crowd of street vendors. He ends up in smaller streets, hidden between two big avenues and takes solace in the calm they offer. The city, despite its apparent desire for order, is messy and contradictory and that’s fine; Roger is messy and contradictory too. It’s one of the things Roger loves the most, to arrive in an unfamiliar – if not completely foreign – city and to discover, as the days go by and his knowledge of the city deepens, that there are aspects of it he can identify with. Here, it’s the hidden mess behind the appearance of order.

As soon as Roger gets out of the centre he finds himself on huge avenues, built to let tanks pass. On each side, rows of buildings that seem to be on the verge of collapsing. Children play outside until late into the night, if one can call it so when there is nothing to distinguish it from the day. It’s July and the sun doesn’t set before 2am, only to rise a few hours later. Roger can’t sleep under the assault of the ever-present white, transparent light and his evenings are spent wandering those avenues. Instead of walking, most people appear to be stumbling back home and it’s impossible to say if it’s alcohol or the light rendering them to this seemingly drunken state. Roger feels some kind of secret kinship with them, as if he’s not the only one who has been forgotten.

There’s also the sea. Roger spends entire days at Laskovy beach, lounging under the sun and gets one of the worst sunburns of his life. He buys a postcard with a picture of the beach and writes:

_Not Tenerife but I still got sunburnt._

_Roger._

He posts it and continues his exploration of the city. By the time it reaches Rafa he’ll probably have moved on to the next one. That’s how it goes: except for the days they spend together, Roger’s life is always a few steps ahead of Rafa’s knowledge of it.

He has, indeed, moved on to Prague when Rafa texts him. He’s sitting in a dimly-lit pub, one where, according to the rather well-meaning owner, receptionist and cook of the small hotel he’s staying at, he can get weed – _if he asks nicely_. Apparently, it’s a thing. Roger is quite satisfied with the beer he’s nursing, though.

_How do you get a sunburn in Russia, Roger?_

_The risks of travelling_ , Roger types back.

_No Tenerife?_

_No._

_Where are you now?_

_Prague,_ Roger says, _chasing ghosts_ , and he adds half a dozen ghost emojis for good measure, knowing that they’ll be met with Rafa’s stony silence. For some reason, he has never been taken with emojis and seems to resent Roger’s rather liberal use of them. Roger lets five minutes pass before sending another text. Then, he puts his phone back in his pocket and sips the rest of his beer.

_Maybe one day we can go to Tenerife together?_

When he dares check his phone again, there is a single notification from Rafa.

_Yes._

It’s not a small compromise and Roger is aware of it. _I’m ready to move on_ , Rafa is telling him. _What are you ready to do?_

***

Roger doesn’t stay in Prague for long. Even though his text to Rafa was meant as a joke, it does feel like he’s surrounded by ghosts, not only the ones that are supposed to be haunting the city but also the ones of his previous ambitions. He had stood there, on the Old Town Square, in another life, had dreamt of a future that will forever remain hypothetical. He supposes that, in the end, it’s not so different from the other kinds of disappointments and setbacks he’s experienced in his life, if more extreme. It’s the irrevocability of it that continues to drive him a bit mad; knowing that there is nothing he can do to change what happened, that he has no influence on events. The things that just _happen_ to you are always the hardest ones to come to terms with. Acknowledging their own helplessness is not something human beings like to do, and Roger is perhaps the most human of them all.

Despite of how pensive his thoughts turn out to be under the gold light of September in Prague, Roger is in a good mood. In his pockets, his phone containing Rafa’s single “yes” and a key to Rafa’s house. He’s not doing so bad.

His good mood doesn’t leave him when he reaches Budapest. Autumn has settled and whereas Roger’s time in St Petersburg was spent under never-ending light, his exploration of Budapest happens in semi-permanent obscurity. The sun starts setting just after 2pm and it seems to take a long time for the night to come, the fading rays of light casting shadows all over the city for the better part of the afternoon.

Roger spends hours near the Danube. It’s not as large as the Neva but it’s more evocative. At dawn, looking at it from the Chain bridge, the city, painted in pale pastel colours, moulds itself into an impressionist’s dream and, at night, it’s the reflections of thousands of lights in the water that create their own abstract picture. As unique as they are, Roger finds that there is a similar feeling to all those Eastern European cities. It has to do with how they are still standing after having been almost destroyed by the same wave of historical events. Survival, it would seem, leaves its trace everywhere for those who are able to recognize it.

Roger’s main discovery in Budapest, though, remains the baths. The Szechenyi baths are the first ones he tries and it’s a shock to the body and the mind. When he gets into one of the outside pools, the warm waters and the fresh air of November engulf him at the same time, caressing his skin and a feeling of exhilaration unfurls in his chest, something buoyant and joyous and Roger wants to laugh. Instead he closes his eyes and, surrounded by hot water, he lets his mind float away. For a few precious moments, it all disappears: the burden of a past he seems to be the only one incapable of forgetting, the fragile hope for a future he’s just starting to envision. There, he knows a respite.

After that, Roger endeavours to try all the baths the city has to offer and makes a mental note to come back with Rafa, one day. Which is something new. He’s always avoided this train of thought because he knows how hard it is to stop imagining, once you’ve begun. But now that Rafa answered _yes_ to Roger’s _maybe_ it’s all too easy to daydream about coming back here with him, showing him the baths and the Christmas markets that flourish as soon as November ends, making Rafa drink mulled wine and standing very close to him and – This is where Roger’s fantasy stops. Anything more is too uncertain, too fragile to even dare conjure up the idea of it. This is enough for now.

Around mid-December, Roger leaves Budapest and Eastern Europe behind him for the South and Athens.

***

In Athens, all his daydreams evaporate and Roger grows restless. Maybe it has to do with being back near the Mediterranean or maybe it has to do with the fact that this is his last stop before going back to Rafa and his newfound courage seems to be abandoning him a bit more with every passing day.  It’s one thing to ask Rafa about the things they don’t talk about when there is the entirety of the European continent between them and quite another to have to go home to him and deal with them. There is not much he can do about it, though, and he resolves to ignore it for the moment.

After the neat lines and huge avenues of Prague, Budapest and St Petersburg, Athens feels unapologetically chaotic to Roger, with its bundles of streets. Instead of an imposing castle looming over the city there is the Acropolis and its ruins. Standing on top of it, one morning, Roger senses it once again, this feeling of communion with a city. The earth beneath his feet smells like the past and like thousands of forgotten lives and Roger wishes he could lie down on the ground and let the whispers of their stories wash over him.

At night, he goes to clubs where live music is being played and listens to rembetika singers until the early hours of the morning. He doesn’t understand the lyrics and it matters little to him; he understands the rhythm of the music, the longing it carries. He sometimes marvels at the picture he must make, sitting silently in taverns, how at odds it is with the image of him that had been marketed and sold all over the world for more than fifteen years. He wonders – if there was anyone out there who could still recognize him, would they?

The day before he is supposed to fly to Mallorca the restlessness comes back, leaving him wide-eyed and unable to sleep. A bit after midnight he gives up and leaves the hotel. Maybe a short walk will do him some good. He doesn’t pay attention to where he’s going until he finds himself near Gazi, and – _ah_. Well. He could have one drink. One drink can’t hurt.   

He sits down in a bar where the music isn’t threatening him with impeding deafness and orders a cocktail with a name he can’t pronounce. He has no idea what he is doing, only knows that he wants to scream and cry at the same time and that _something_ needs to give. His last visit to Rafa, the past six months spent trying to get better – because that’s what he’s been doing – the words exchanged with Rafa, _I miss you,_ _maybe one day we can go to Tenerife together, yes,_ everything coalesces in his mind and god, he wants it to fucking stop. So he orders another cocktail, one with a different name, for good measure.

He is at his fourth (fifth?) cocktail when a man sits down in front of him and Roger exhales. This is what he has been waiting for.

“Can I sit here?” the man asks, even though he doesn’t seem to need Roger’s approval.

“Sure,” Roger answers.

“I’m Alexandro. What’s your name?”

“Roger.”

“And what are you doing here? You’re not from here, right?”

“No,” Roger laughs. “I’m just, you know, visiting. Travelling.”

“All alone?” Alexandro asks, his tone conveying that it’s the saddest thing he can imagine.

“Yeah.” Roger doesn’t feel like explaining himself.

“No girlfriend back home? Or boyfriend?”

Roger’s breath hitches. “No,” he answers, voice low even though there is no one around to overhear him. “No girlfriend and no boyfriend.”

“Well,” Alexandro replies, looking satisfied with Roger’s answer. “A boyfriend and a girlfriend would be a bit much I guess.”

Roger nods in acquiescence and asks Alexandro about himself, which seems a safer conversation topic. Alexandro is happy to comply and, when the waiter comes near them, orders two more of “whatever he’s having,” pointing at Roger’s cocktail. The fact that Roger has no clue what he _is_ having doesn’t deter him.

They talk and it’s easy, this gentle flirtation. Alexandro is younger than him but not by much and the way he looks at Roger is both appreciative and simple. His stare doesn’t carry the weight of nine grand slam finals between them, of years of unspoken words or the collapse of their entire world.  Later, when he comes back from the counter with two new cocktails and sits down next to Roger rather than in front of him, Roger doesn’t say a thing. He doesn’t say a thing when Alexandro suggests they should pay the bill and go outside for a bit and he doesn’t say a thing when he finds himself pushed against a wall, knowing exactly what is about to happen.

It’s a stupid idea, Roger is aware of that, and it won’t solve anything. Roger isn’t even sure what he’s trying to prove – to the world, to himself – but he’s drunk and he has been alone for so long and the one person he wants is currently sleeping on the other side of the Mediterranean in a house no one except Roger ever comes to and isn’t that fucked up, huh? So _fuck it_.

Roger lets Alexandro kiss him and it’s all wrong, it’s not what he thought he wanted at all. He breaks the kiss, pushing Alexandro away.

“I’m sorry,” Roger says, feeling every bit like the cliché he must appear to be. “I can’t do this.”

“It’s fine,” Alexandro answers. “It’s still early. Plenty of time for me to find someone else, right?”

“Yeah,” Roger says. His head is spinning and he fears he might be sick. “You won’t tell anyone, right?”

“Who would I tell?” Alexandro laughs and right. Right. There is no one to tell anything. Roger hasn’t made such a mistake in years.

“Well, goodbye then,” Roger says.

“Will you be all right?” Alexandro asks.

“Yeah,” Roger answers, taking a few uneven steps. “I’m fine.”

He isn’t but there’s no one left to call him out on his lie.

***

Standing in front of Rafa’s door, remnants of the pounding headache he woke up to still lingering at the back of his skull, Roger almost wishes it wouldn’t open. He could stay there, with his guilt and the nausea caught in his throat, alone in front of a closed door. But Rafa opens the door and smiles and it takes every ounce of Roger’s willpower not to crumble in front of him. It’s easy to forget when they’re apart, no matter how he never leaves Roger’s thoughts – how bright he is. How alive.

“Roger,” he says, delighted, as if it’s a surprise to see him even though Roger texted him to tell him he was coming. The way he stares at Roger isn’t simple at all, it’s complicated and scary, speaking of tenderness and sorrow. Roger lets his travel bag fall on the floor and hugs Rafa, holding him a bit too tight.

“Bad flight?” Rafa asks and Roger laughs.

“Something like that,” he replies. He can sense Rafa smile and he doesn’t need to look at him to know which one it is, his cautious smile. The one that graces his features when he’s not sure whether he should be worried or not. He doesn’t ask questions, though, nor does he demand answers. He lets Roger be.

When Roger feels less like he could shatter at any given moment he breaks their embrace, takes a deep breath and smiles.

“Better?”

“Yeah,” Roger says. “Sorry about that.”

Rafa gives him a quizzical glance. “Is fine,” he says before adding, in a tone that suffers no argument, “I take your bag in your room and then dinner.”

“Right. I’ll be in the kitchen then.”

Roger passes through the living room which is unchanged. Same pristine state, same sofa, same trinkets he brought back from his travels adorning the shelves on the wall facing the sofa. In a way, there is more of him here than in his own flat, traces of his presence carefully put on a display even when he’s gone. Somewhere in the house, there’s a drawer full of the postcards he’s sent. He moves on to the kitchen, where Rafa’s latest experiment is cooking. The scent of aromatic herbs fills the room and Roger is reminded that he hasn’t eaten anything since before he decided that getting spectacularly drunk for the first time in years was a good idea. He leans against the kitchen counter as he always does: from there, he can watch Rafa work.  

“Is almost done,” Rafa says when he enters the kitchen, pointing at the heating pot. “Smells good, no?”

“Yes,” Roger agrees. “It does. What is it?”

“Callos,” Rafa answers. “Spanish stew. It is very good.”

“Hmm,” Roger mutters noncommittally. He knows better than to ask what’s in it.

Rafa isn’t fooled. “It is,” he insists, laughing.

“I trust you,” Roger says, and Rafa gives him a soft smile.

“So,” Rafa says, retrieving a spatula from a drawer and beginning to stir the sew. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, careful with his English the way he is when they’re at the beginning of an important conversation.

Roger nods but doesn’t start talking immediately. He watches the precise circling motions Rafa makes with his arms, the careful way with which he holds the spatula with both of his hands. He blinks, chasing away flickering visions of Rafa’s hands gripping a tennis racket.

“Are there times…,” he starts, before hesitating. He’s not sure how to put this into words without giving away too much. “Are there times you’re glad this happened?”

“Is this what you want to ask me?” Rafa lets go of the spatula and turns around to look at Roger, sounding incredulous. “Am I happy this happened to us?”

“No, you’re right.” This is going all wrong. “What I mean is, I guess there are things we can do now, that you can do now, that we couldn’t do before, you know what I mean?”

“Just ask the question, Roger.” Rafa’s tone isn’t unkind. He goes back to his stew, taking the spatula out and bringing it to his mouth to taste the food. He nods to himself.

“You don’t have to hide anymore,” and this is the bluntest way Roger can put it. “Is it easier? Now that you don’t have to hide?”

“Ah,” Rafa says before falling silent. He turns the heat off and goes to retrieve two plates from a cupboard. “No, it is not easier,” he says. He fills the plates and comes to join Roger at the kitchen counter, where he puts them down.

“But it was also never hard for me, no?” Rafa continues, sitting down on a stool as Roger does the same. His tone is pensive. “We talk about this once, the sacrifices you make for tennis. The sacrifices we all make. This was a sacrifice, for sure, but my parents knew and Toni knew and it wasn’t… It wasn’t hard. I was happy,” he says, not looking at Roger. He’s looking at something Roger can’t see but can imagine: the memories of a life that is out of their reach.

He was happy. Roger wants to say – _I know. I remember it_.

“Eat,” Rafa says. “Or it gets cold.”

Roger does and they don’t talk for a while. Despite Roger’s misgivings the stew is quite good, which he tells Rafa, and it helps settle his fragile stomach, which he doesn’t tell Rafa.

“Thank you,” Rafa smiles. “Why do you ask me this?”

Roger pushes his plate away and sighs. Rafa has been truthful with him and he owes him the same honesty. Still, he is glad Rafa didn’t ask him _why now_.

“I’ve always kind of known that I liked men too,” Roger starts, glancing at Rafa to see if there is any visible reaction on his face. It’s a bit absurd because they have been in this sort of weird relationship for the better part of four years now and even before that there was all the rest, the flirting and the touching, but it’s different to acknowledge it out loud. To have it out in the open, after all this time. Rafa’s usually expressive face remains impassive, though. Roger continues, “But then I met Mirka when I was really young so I didn’t really have to think about it, you know? There were, like, no tough choices for me to make, no decisions to take. So I wondered what it was like.”

“Because now there is no Mirka?”

“Yeah,” Roger says, although that’s not exactly it.

“And there is no tennis,” Rafa adds. A statement of fact.

“Yeah,” Roger repeats. “It’s strange, isn’t it? That it somehow seems more complicated now.”

“You figure it out,” Rafa says with such faith Roger nearly regrets not telling him the whole truth. But there are things he can’t say yet, things he can’t even articulate to himself.

“I guess I will.”

“Dessert?” Rafa asks, getting up.

Roger nods and the conversation ventures to other topics. Roger tells Rafa about the cities he saw, trying to give Rafa bits of what he loved so much about each of them, and, in turn, Rafa recounts what he did while Roger was away. Roger might be making it up but there seems to be a special kind of glow about Rafa tonight, as if something has changed but Rafa is not ready to tell him yet. They end up on the living room sofa, each curled on one side of it and it’s time for the memories to unfurl between them. It almost doesn’t hurt.

When Roger goes to bed, after promising Rafa that he’ll stay at least another day or two, he feels lighter than he has in years. He falls asleep to dreams of a future he can’t quite touch yet but that he believes exists.

***

There are mornings, bright and luminous, when the world seems to be brimming with possibilities. Everything comes into focus and suddenly it’s not so hard to believe that there is a path carved out for you in the world, that there is some kind of order amidst all the chaos and uncertainty of life. That if you want something badly enough, you might one day get it.

When Roger wakes up, he knows that it’s one of those mornings even though he hasn’t had one in years. It’s early – Rafa is still sleeping – and Roger decides to have breakfast in the garden. The sky is a transparent blue and the air is sharp the way it is just after dawn, brisk and fresh. Roger takes a sip of his coffee, hot, almost burning, and everything is so _so_ clear.

“Good morning,” Rafa says, stepping out in the garden and sitting down in front of Roger. His hair is damp from his shower and Roger smiles.

“It is a good morning, isn’t it? Beautiful.”

“Yes.” Rafa picks one of the toasts Roger made and starts eating his breakfast. The silence is peaceful, Roger content to look at Rafa, making plans for the day. They could go to the beach or maybe into town. It’s been a while since Roger stayed more than one night – always careful not to let himself get used to this life again – and he wants to make the best of his time here before leaving. He’s about to voice his suggestions out loud when Rafa speaks.

“There is something I want to show you,” he says, in a cautious voice.

“Sure,” Roger answers. “What is it?”

Rafa shrugs.

“Oh, it’s a surprise?”

“We can go now?” Rafa says. “If you want.”

And maybe Roger should have paid attention to how nervous Rafa had become, maybe he should have seen it coming. But it was such a beautiful morning and there was a sense that nothing could go wrong. Which is, of course, when it all did.

“Come on,” Rafa says. “It is on the other side of the garden.”

They walk to the end of the garden, where a row of cypress trees hides the house and the garden from the outside world. Roger wasn’t aware that there was something on the other side. Rafa opens a small gate and disappears between two trees, signalling for Roger to follow him.

Then, a step in the dark.

Rafa is waiting for him on the other side in front of what appears to be –  a tennis court. The world teeters and, for a moment, Roger can see them in front of him, separated by the tiniest of veils, the world where Rafa having a tennis court makes sense and the world where it doesn’t, and they are irreconcilable. Then the vision vanishes and Roger is left in this world, the only one he has, and he blinks and blinks and blinks but the tennis court is still _there._

Roger turns back toward Rafa and he’s not sure what his face is showing but it mustn’t be good because Rafa takes a step back.

“I miss it,” Rafa says, and it’s almost an apology.

“No,” Roger says. No to what? His heart is in his throat and his head is spinning and he can’t breathe at all.

“Roger,” Rafa says, his voice firmer now, as if he needs Roger to understand this. “I miss it.”

“You can’t,” Roger starts, “you can’t do this to me.” Which is absurd. It’s done. It’s standing right in front of him.

Rafa looks down and Roger hopes that maybe he’ll say _you’re right_ , and _let’s forget about it_ , and the court will just disappear and it will still be a beautiful day full of possibilities, but when Rafa looks back up there’s something in his eyes Roger hasn’t seen in a long time. It’s the way he used to stare at Roger during a match, a refusal to back down, to give up, and Roger understands he is not winning this.

“It’s been almost five years,” Rafa says, as if Roger hasn’t been counting them too.

“And what?” he asks.

“I miss it,” Rafa repeats for the third time and fuck this. This is it, the fatal blow Roger’s been afraid of all along and, as any wounded animal would when fearing for its life, Roger lashes out. It’s nothing more than pure instinct, something primordial and ugly and as soon as Roger utters the words he regrets them but there is no going back.

“I know you do, god Rafa. You spend all your time cooking and cleaning like those are the most important things in your life and you think I don’t get that you miss it? But what is this,” he gestures toward the court, “going to change? How is it supposed to help? You won’t even talk to your family and they live twenty minutes away from you. Is a court suddenly going to make it all okay?”

Rafa recoils but doesn’t relent. “You don’t talk to Mirka,” he points out. “You don’t talk to the kids.” Which is fucking unfair and not the same thing at all, except Rafa doesn’t know that.

“This isn’t about me,” Roger says and it’s not. It’s about the sudden distance between them just when Roger thought they were getting somewhere. It’s about Rafa being miles ahead of Roger and Roger being left behind.

Rafa crosses his arms on his chest, staring at Roger, waiting for Roger to give in. Roger can’t.

So he does what he knows best. He flees.

***

He ends up at the beach, walking aimlessly next to the sea, trying not to get his shoes wet. At some point, he just gives up and takes them off, letting the water wash over his bare feet. _You don’t talk to Mirka_. The water against his legs isn’t as cold as Roger thought it would be and he barely hesitates before taking off the rest of his clothes, except for his underwear, and throwing them behind him. Then he walks until his head is the only part of his body not immerged in water. _You don’t talk to the kids_.   

Guilt is a funny thing. In Roger’s mind, Rafa’s voice sounds more accusatory than it was, angrier. Roger closes his eyes, listening to the rhythmic noises of the waves. It’s true, what he said to Rafa the night before. There was always Mirka and therefore there had never been any tough decisions to make. It wasn’t true that he had never thought about it, though.

There are two choices. He can swim back to the beach, go back to Rafa’s house, pack his stuff and leave. Rafa won’t be surprised to find him gone and maybe, six months from now when he comes back (if he comes back), they’ll be able to put this behind them and go back to the _status quo_. Or Roger can face it, once and for all.

Here, where it’s just him and the sea, he decides to be as honest as he can.

The truth is, sometimes Roger believes that he created this world. That he wanted it. There were times, late at night, Mirka sleeping beside him, when he wondered if in another time, in another world, it would be possible for him and Rafa to be together. Those were the nights when the thought of never touching Rafa, of never kissing him left Roger breathless, gasping for air. But – and Roger dives into the water, lets the sea engulf him, floating underwater where no one can see him, can find him – that’s not all there was to it. If it was, Roger can acknowledge it now, he would probably have started something, tried to at least. No, what was driving Roger to imagine other worlds, worlds where they would be free, was this: the idea of never knowing what Rafa looked like early in the morning, sleep-rumpled, of never knowing what he looked like in the fading light of the evening, tired after a long day of work, of never knowing what he looked like in the middle of the night, exhausted yet unable to sleep. The idea of never having a life together.

It’s not an admission, not quite. But it’s a start.

He keeps on swimming for a while, until his body aches with it, until his mind becomes blank, driven by instinct. When his vision begins to blur, he decides to stop and go do the right thing. 

The house is empty when Roger gets there but he doesn’t panic. He knows where Rafa is. He takes a quick shower, washing away the sand and the salt clinging to his skin. When he gets out, he stops in front of the bathroom mirror for a moment, examining himself. It’s not something he does too often: constant travelling and less than stellar accommodations tend to strip away any vanity you might have. His body is a bit thinner than it used to be. He walks a lot and he does exercise but he’s not – He’s not an athlete anymore and it shows. There are a few more lines on his face but it’s mostly his sunken cheeks that age him.  It’s strange not being able to tell if he would have got there anyway or if those changes are the product of this life he’s living. He supposes that, in the end, it matters little. He puts on clean clothes and goes to find Rafa.

He’s sitting on the ground near the tennis court, where Roger knew he’d found him. Roger watches him, taking advantage of the fact that Rafa is deep in thought and unaware of his presence. He seems, well, at least as tired as Roger feels. It’s in the way he holds himself, as if it’s taking him every ounce of strength he has to keep the shattered, ready to scatter parts of himself together. Roger glances at the court, then back at Rafa and clears his throat. Rafa looks up and, when he sees Roger, makes a motion to get up but Roger shakes his head.

“Do you mind?” he says, gesturing toward the empty space next to Rafa.

“No,” Rafa says. “I do not mind.”

Roger sits down, resting his elbows on his knees. Rafa keeps staring at the court in front of them, jaw clenched, and Roger supposes he’s deserved it. It’s not their first fight but it’s the first one since everything happened and there’s no easy way to try salvaging this.

“I’m sorry,” Roger says. “I shouldn’t have said all that.” Rafa stays silent. “Look I… I thought I was doing better, right? I thought I was doing okay but I wasn’t expecting that and I reacted badly.”

“Is fine,” Rafa answers. “I am sorry for, ah, pushing you?” he glances at Roger and Roger nods. Rafa’s gaze is blank and, remembering how joyful he was the day before, Roger wants to scream a little. But Rafa isn’t finished. “The court, it isn’t for you. Is for me.”   

“Okay,” Roger says.

“I want to coach kids,” Rafa continues. “Is a little thing, no? It is not winning slams or being number one in the world but it is something I want to do. I think I would be good at it.”

“Yeah, that’s…” Roger tries very hard not to think about the distance between them, how far behind Rafa is leaving him. “That’s great. You would definitely be great.”

“Yes,” Rafa seems happier now. “I did it a bit with the kids at my academy, no? Before. So the court it’s for the coaching and for me.”

“I’m happy for you,” Roger says and the smile Rafa gives him in return is the only thing that prevents Roger’s heart from breaking on the spot.

Rafa keeps talking about his plans and Roger listens, concentrating on each word, each sentence as if his life depended on it. The sun eventually starts to set and they decide to make their way back to the house. Just before they get to the trees, Rafa turns around.

“Roger,” he says, standing very straight. In the dim light of the evening, the sky painted gold and pink, he looks like a statue. Untouchable. Unreachable. “You know I would not ask you for what you cannot give me?”

“I know,” Roger answers and Rafa nods, satisfied, before disappearing between the cypress trees.

Roger knows. Of course, he does. Rafa has always been the better person.

***

The next day things are a bit awkward. They dance around each other, even more so than usual, and speak in soft tones, as if one word louder than the other could break the fragile peace they had managed to achieve the night before. When the evening comes, Rafa starts going in and out of the kitchen, unsure of whether he should cook something for dinner or not and Roger wants to take the words back, wants to take everything back – his anger at Rafa moving on without him, his hurt at being left behind – but he can’t do that. If there’s one thing Roger understands it’s irreversibility.  

“Why don’t we go out for dinner?” he says instead, trying to find an acceptable middle ground. “My treat, yeah?”

“Okay,” Rafa says.

They find a small restaurant that specializes in simple sea food. It’s not the busiest time of the year but there are plenty of people and noises in the background and Roger can’t help but notice that Rafa seems to relish it. Rafa’s solitude is one of those many things Roger endeavours not to dwell on. If Roger asked Rafa about it, not confronted him the way he did the day before but _asked_ , Rafa would probably shrug it off and, anyway, it’s not like Roger doesn’t get the need for a clean slate, doesn’t have an intimate knowledge of how far away from the person you used to be trying to cope will drive you.

They both order and, if Roger tried hard enough, he could convince himself that they’re back in time and this is one of those rare occasions they had managed to find some precious hour alone to share a meal. He doesn’t want to, though. Despite everything, this Rafa in front of him, savouring his food, speaking little and offering contented smiles to Roger, is the one he knows best. And if he is a bit broken, well. So is Roger.

“You know where you are going?” Rafa asks, when they are finished with their dinner, waiting for the check to arrive. The topic of Roger leaving is never an easy one to deal with and best be left till the end.

Roger hesitates. If he tells Rafa, there’s no way he won’t understand what Roger wants to do and there’s still a part of Roger that believes he should do it all alone, without telling anyone. Then again, he’s never really been alone in this, has he?

“Paris,” he says. “At first. Then I think New York. And I’ll probably end with London.”

Rafa stays silent for a while, staring at his empty plate. Then, “No Melbourne?”

“I’m… I’m not sure I want to go that far,” Roger answers. “I want to make it quick. Less than six months.”

“Oh.”

It’s all he can give Rafa for now. It’s not enough, it’s never been enough, but Roger is trying. He hopes Rafa understands that.

Rafa smiles, something soft and private, before looking back up at Roger. “Still no Tenerife, then?”

Roger laughs. “No, not this time I guess.” He doesn’t remind Rafa of his text, of the _yes_ , but it’s there in the air between them, nearly tangible.

They walk back to the house in silence, not the fragile one they woke up to this morning, one that is easy and peaceful. It’s the kind of silence that exists between two people who know each other very well, for whom words aren’t necessary anymore. There is one more thing Roger needs to say, though. He waits until they have almost reached the house, unwilling to break the quietness of the moment.

He stops and Rafa turns around, one eyebrow raised. Roger exhales.

“I miss it too, you know?” he says, and it feels a bit like he just took his heart out of his chest and threw it at Rafa’s feet. He has never felt this vulnerable. “Every day.”

Rafa takes a step toward Roger and embraces him, not in the way he usually does when Roger arrives or leaves but the way he used to after a match, one arm thrown around his shoulder, his palm pressed at the base of Roger’s stomach, their foreheads touching.

“I know,” he says. His fingers move, curling around Roger’s waist and Roger lets out a shaky breath.

Around them, everything is quiet except for the steady beats of their mending hearts.

***

Paris in January is fucking dreadful. It rains almost constantly and, when the rain stops, it leaves place to a cold that seems to infiltrate Roger’s very bones.

At first, he goes from museum to museum. What he has planned to do isn’t easy and he figures that pretending that this is just another stop in his long list of travels might help. He dutifully spends hours in the _Louvre,_ which turns out to be more of a labyrinth than a museum, goes to the _musée d’Orsay_ where he does find the impressionist paintings and devotes an entire day to the _Grand Palais_ and the _Petit Palais_ , even though at the end of it he still has no idea which is which.

The pretence doesn’t last long. No matter how hard he tries Roger can’t concentrate on the pieces of art displayed in front of him and gets out of the museums every night feeling like he hasn’t seen anything, paintings and statues and ancient artefacts all merging in his mind to form an evanescent canvas of colours and lines that has no meaning at all. He gives up and spends the second week locked away in his hotel room, sheltered from the rain and the cold.

_I miss it_. Now that he’s admitted it, that he’s spoken the words out loud they never seem to leave him, always at the back of his mind like a melody you can’t get rid of. _I miss it_. Of course, he does. It wasn’t so much an epiphany as it was an acknowledgement of fact. It was always there during those years spent going from city to city, from one place of the world to the other, like a bruise that never quite heals. Maybe it wasn’t the search for some elusive peace that had kept him on the road but an attempt at putting as much distance as he could between him and those three simple words.

_I miss it_. How could he not? Here, in this hotel room with a view of the rooftops of Paris, alone with the scattered remnants of the takeaway meals he’s been subsisting on, there is nowhere to flee. There is nowhere to hide. The thing is, he had always thought that he would quit on his own terms. That it would be his decision and no one else’s. He had never imagined that the decision would be taken away from him, with no chance for him to do anything about it. And, more than that, he had always thought that, when all was said and done, he would leave something behind him. A trace of his presence. Something that said to the world, _this is who I was. This is what I did. I existed_.

And maybe it _is_ vanity or hubris to ask for the world to remember you, to acknowledge that you meant something, but it wasn’t a gratuitous demand. He worked fucking hard for it, he dedicated his life to it and it is gone. He feels it disappear, the last tenuous bit of hope he didn’t know he was carrying that he would someday wake up from this nightmare and that it would be all right. There is nothing to wake up from. No way to undo the past.

Roger closes his eyes, lying down on his bed. His heart doesn’t stop beating at the revelation even though it would make sense if it did. He doesn’t stop breathing, each inhalation and exhalation as steady as ever. Hope, when it vanishes, doesn’t leave a mark.

He hides in his room for another week.

When he gets out of the hotel February has chased away January and the sky is a clear, transparent blue. Roger doesn’t give himself the opportunity to ponder what he’s about to do, just walks to the nearest tube station and enters it. It’s the first time he has gone there this way but it’s fitting that he should just be another curious tourist. The streets are empty when he emerges from the station, which is fine. He doesn’t want anyone to wonder why he is here or what it is he’s doing.

The main entrance of Roland Garros is closed. There is no reason why it shouldn’t be, it is the middle of winter after all. Roger lets his fingers linger on the cool metal of the gates.

“Tennis fan?” someone who looks like a security guard asks him and Roger takes a step back.

“Something like that,” he replies in French.

“This is the best time of the year for me,” the guard continues. “Not so much for you.”

“Yeah. I guess there’s no way you could let me in?” he asks, because he has nothing to lose.

The guard shakes his head, laughing. “Sorry, no. Can’t let anyone who wanders around here get in, you know?”

“I know.” Roger offers him a smile and thanks him before turning around.

He ends up sitting in a café a few streets away from the station, frowning at the postcard he bought. What can he say? _I’m trying this whole mourning process thing, confronting the past and all that but the grounds are closed to me and how am I supposed to mourn something I can’t touch, I can’t see?_ No. _The last time we played here you were wearing a shade of blue that coloured every one of my dreams for months._ Not that either. _If I had known, maybe I would have played in Paris_. Definitely not.

He orders another beer for ten euros only and writes:

_The waiters are incredibly rude and the food is overpriced._

_I guess some things never change._

_Roger._

Roger decides to walk back to his hotel even though it is on the other side of the city, enjoying the quietness of a Monday afternoon. The last time they played here, it had ended with Rafa smeared in clay and despite Roger’s frustration and disappointment there had been something right about it, something inevitable. Whatever else it was he wanted from Rafa, he had never intended to take this away from him: the happiness of victory, the relief in thinking _one more_ , the memories.

“I didn’t want this,” he says out loud. An old woman feeding some pigeons gives him a look reserved for those who are a bit mad before going back to her task. “I never wanted any of this,” Roger continues because he doesn’t care if people think he’s crazy. He stands there in the middle of the street, waiting for some tears to come, for something to right itself inside of him but nothing happens. So he goes back to his hotel and books a flight to New York.

***

Roger loves New York. He loves the noise and the people, how everything seems a bit too big to be real. In some ways, it reminds him of Dubai except that there was never this chaotic quality to Dubai; it was as quiet as it was huge and it sometimes felt like the desert surrounding it had somehow managed to take hold of the city itself. New York, though, is full of life and it surprises Roger that he had forgotten that. Then again, the last time he’d been there was for the Met gala and his life now is so different from what it was then that he might as well be recalling the memories of a stranger.   

What Roger doesn’t love is the New York subway. He’s been waiting for the 7 train for _at least_ twenty minutes even though it was supposed to arrive ten minutes ago and he has already seen two rats. Roger’s just landed this morning but decided that, this time, he wouldn’t spend weeks putting off what he needed to do. Which is why he’s standing on a platform, exhausted, waiting for a train that isn’t coming. He’s about to give up, go back to his hotel and sleep for twelve hours or so, when he hears the unmistakable shrilly sound of a train approaching. Twenty-five minutes. He really doesn’t love the New York subway.

In the train, he sits down and lets out one, two breaths to calm himself down. He’s not sure what he’s expecting, by going to Flushing. Paris was easy, in a way. Paris was Rafa’s and it always felt to Roger that he wasn’t quite where he belonged there, that each round he passed was only him borrowing some time before the inevitable would happen. New York was strange, neutral ground, when it came to him and Rafa. A land of missed opportunities. He doesn’t think about London yet.

When he gets out of the metro, snow has started to fall. Roger blinks, taking in the incongruity of the vision, how at odds this white landscape is with his memories of incandescent, suffocating summer days. He walks, childishly wishing that it would be easier, that he could just somehow get into the stadium and mourn instead of having to notice all the tiny things he’s never noticed before, because he’s never done it this way before. He resents the subway and the snow and the grounds which are closed again. His hands are freezing and he tries to warm them by rubbing them together, even though it never works.

He stands there, near the Queens museum, unmoving as the snow keeps falling. It’s not grief that settles in his veins, it’s something that seems to be beyond it. In his mind, everything is silent. He feels blank. Empty. Like it wouldn’t take much for the pieces of his soul to be scattered away by the wind, like it wouldn’t take much for him to disappear.

In a way, he already has.

***

The snowstorm lasts three more days during which Roger stays in his hotel room and well. So much for not doing that. Every step he makes in the right direction seems to be followed by two steps backwards. Still, when the storm ends he forces himself to go outside. He forgoes museums and takes long walks instead, relishing the liveliness of the city. He drinks litres of awful coffee in coffee shops that have the weirdest names and eats an impressive amount of vegan cakes. In a small bookshop, he finds a used copy of the _Odyssey_ and buys it. He considers growing a beard.    

He’s stalling for time.

It’s hard to pinpoint what he fears the most: for something to happen in London or to find once again that there are no sudden and bright epiphanies that could somehow right all that went wrong, that he is alone with this and must find the answers for himself.

But how do you let go? How do you let go of guilt when it’s the only thing you have left to make sense of what happened to you? How do you accept that some things just happen, that they are cruel and senseless and that there will never be any satisfying explanation for them?

Roger doesn’t know. So he waits.

_The waiters are not rude to me_ , Rafa texts him, one night.

“This can’t be true,” Roger says as soon as Rafa answers his call.  “Parisian waiters are rude to everyone.”

“Hello Roger,” Rafa says, but Roger can hear a laugh in his voice.

“Hello Raf,” Roger answers. “But really?”

“Really. Maybe I am too nice.”

“No, no. They don’t care about that.”

“Ha, wait,” Rafa says, before starting to speak in Mallorquin with someone. Roger sits down on his bed, surprisingly comforted at hearing Rafa speak his own language. “Sorry for that,” Rafa says after a few minutes. “My neighbour, she came for her kid.”

“Are you babysitting?”

“No,” Rafa laughs. “I’m teaching. Coaching, like I told you?”

“Oh,” Roger answers. “How is it going?”

“It’s only one kid, but is going well, I think,” Rafa says, voice soft. “He can’t beat me yet.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” Roger answers, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. “How… How does it feel?”

“Good. It feels good, Roger.”

“That’s good. I’m happy for you,” he says, stifling a yawn.  

“What time is it for you?” Rafa asks.

“I have no idea. Nearly dawn, I think.”

“Got to bed, Roger. We talk another time, no?”

“Yeah, sure. Goodnight Rafa.”

“Goodnight.”

Roger lets his phone fall on the bed beside him and rests his hands on his chest. He _is_ happy for Rafa, a happiness that isn’t tainted with anything else. No envy. No resentment. He tries imagining what kind of teacher Rafa must be. A kind one, he guesses. He wishes he could be there to see it, not just Rafa coaching a kid but the beginnings of it, the awkwardness and the mistakes he will surely make before settling into this new role, this new life.

Outside, he can hear the muffled sounds of passers-by whose lives he knows nothing about, just as his is now out of their reach. Inside, everything is quiet. He thinks of Rafa, not as he was then – young and raw and something Roger wanted – but as he is now, a little graver, a little sadder. And Roger still wants him but not in a vague, hypothetical scenario, one full of _what ifs_ and _maybes_. He doesn’t want to daydream about it anymore. What he wants is this: for the key he always keeps in his pocket to stop being an anchor and to become something Roger needs to use daily. So Roger allows the thought to bloom, tiny at first, and lets it grow and grow until it’s the only thing left in his mind and it doesn’t hurt at all.

He is in love with Rafa.

He doesn’t want to wait any longer.

***

On the plane taking him to London, Roger reads the copy of the _Odyssey_ he bought. The translation is a bit old and he isn’t familiar with some of the archaic words but he can mostly make sense of it, which is good enough. It’s a funny thing, how a story about coming back home never says what happens to the hero after he reached his goal. Was he happy? Did he find was he was searching for?

In his mind, Rafa’s words echo. _I was happy_. Roger isn’t sure it was always as easy as Rafa made it sound like, isn’t sure there weren’t times when it felt like it was too much to bear. He understands this, though, the careful balance you need to keep between the compromises that allow you to live your life and the ones that threaten to bring you down.

When they land in London, Roger puts the book back in his bag and thinks, _so was_ _I_.

***

London in March is grey and windy, which is not so different from London in June.

Roger starts with the O2 Arena. It’s late afternoon when he gets there and the place is swarming with people. Young people. Apparently, there is a concert taking place tonight.

“Are you looking for a ticket?” a man offers him casually. “I have some left.”

“Sure,” Roger answers. He has no intention of staying for the concert but if it means that he can enter the arena, that he can see it, he will gladly give this man money.

The security guard shoots him a strange look when Roger gives him his ticket, as if Roger wasn’t aware of how out of place he must seem to be. The only other people over thirty are all accompanying children or teenagers but he is beyond feeling ridiculous.

He enters the arena and there is no tennis court, of course. In its place, a stage and seats that are still more than half empty. But there are noises, muttered sounds of excitement, and it’s not so different from the ones that precede a tennis match, it’s the same rush of anticipation. If Roger closed his eyes the illusion would be complete. He doesn’t. He keeps his eyes wide open, the noise growing louder as more people start coming in, the air getting heavier with this specific mix of apprehension and joy that only strangers gathered in love of the same thing can create. This is something Roger understands.  

He stays for the concert.

The next day, Roger buys another ticket, one that promises him to “be inspired with a visit to Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum and a 90-minute Tour of the Grounds”, according to the official website. If he must play the role of a tourist, he might as well go all the way with it.

The tube ride is uneventful and Roger is calm, peaceful. It’s not until he reaches the grounds that the absurdity of what he’s about to do catches up with him. He stands a few feet away from the entrance and looks down at the 25£ ticket he bought. This is stupid. This isn’t Paris and it isn’t New York and it isn’t the O2 Arena. This is Wimbledon. It’s his first slam and his last one and he doesn’t need to go there. He’s never needed to go there to remember, or mourn, any of it – the silence on Centre court, the smell of grass and the way it used to make him feel, like he was exactly where he was supposed to be. Like the world made perfect sense.

Those memories may be lost to the world but he carries them with him, in his mind and in his blood and in this moment, it is enough. He is enough.  

“Hey,” he says to the first person that comes near him. “Do you want a ticket for a visit of the grounds? It starts in ten minutes.”

He’s talking to a young man with a dazed expression on his face, as if he can’t quite believe where he is. “Don’t you want it?” he replies.

“No,” Roger shakes his head. “I’ve been here a few times before.”

“Well, if you don’t mind…”

“Here,” Roger replies, holding out the ticket. “Have fun.”

He thinks he hears the boy thank him but he isn’t paying attention to him anymore. He turns around and walks away from the place he was the happiest back to the tube station. If there is a word for what he’s feeling then, surely, it must be an ancient one that has long been forgotten too. The ache that never leaves him is there, as is the familiar sadness but, most of all, there is relief. He just can’t tell if it’s relief that he came or relief that he’s leaving.

By the time he reaches his destination, the sky has turned purple and the golden light of the evening is fading to black. The day is ending without making a sound. He enters the station.

This is it, the end of his journey. There is nothing left for him to acknowledge in front of a closed stadium or in the artificial quietness of a hotel room. He has battled his own cyclopes and storms.

It’s time to return to Ithaca.    

***

Roger knocks twice and waits. He has stood in front of that door nine times before and, every time, has dreaded the minutes of silence preceding the door opening, those vertiginous minutes when the possibility that Rafa might not be there and that Roger might be left alone in this world again was a tangible thing. But Roger isn’t thinking about that now. There is nothing on his mind but – what is he going to do when he sees Rafa? What he is going to say?

The door doesn’t open.

Roger knocks again, trying to ignore the feeling of panic coursing through his veins, but the door still stays closed. And isn’t it a funny thing, how what you fear the most always happens when you least expect it? Mind blank, Roger accomplishes the gesture he’s rehearsed a thousand times at night when he couldn’t sleep: getting the key out of his pocket, inserting it in the keyhole, putting one hand on the door handle and pushing the door open. Inside, everything is quiet and very still.

Rafa’s bedroom. That’s where he needs to go to see if Rafa has left for good. He climbs the stairs, without really knowing how he manages it – all his strength focused on trying to keep it together, not to let the irrational panic take over him – and he finds himself praying to an unknown deity, _not now, not now, please not now_.

He’s at the top of the stairs when the unmistakable sound of a door opening and closing reaches him. Roger’s heart drops and he puts a hand on the wall not to fall on his knees in relief. _Thank you_. Then, he rushes back down.   

Rafa is standing in the middle of the entryway, door shut behind him, holding in each hand a grocery bag. He is here. Roger doesn’t think. He takes one, two steps forward and kisses him. The bags drop on the floor.

It’s a bit of an awful kiss, all teeth and desperation, Roger’s hands clutching at Rafa’s shoulder blades, but he can’t bring himself to care. What matters is this: Rafa pressed against him, his mouth on Rafa’s, the rise and fall of Rafa’s chest against Roger’s. It doesn’t last long – a few seconds maybe – before Rafa breaks the kiss, retreating. He’s frowning, confusion battling on his face with a feeling Roger can’t quite identify. 

“I’m sorry,” Roger apologizes. “I thought you had left and I just…”

It’s the wrong thing to say. The confusion on Rafa’s face leaves place to annoyance and the way he stares at Roger is harsh, uncompromising.

“Is this why you kiss me?” he asks, voice low. “Because you think I’m gone?”

_Did you only kiss me because you’re relieved I haven’t left you? Is this for you or for me?_ Rafa doesn’t need to voice those questions out loud for them to resonate between them. Roger understands the fleeting expression he hadn’t been able to pinpoint before. It was doubt. As if Rafa couldn’t believe that Roger’s gesture was sincere. Roger supposes he’s deserved it.

“No,” Roger says. “That’s not why. You’ve always had the right to leave.” Which is the truth, no matter that it would have crushed Roger. After all, Roger did.

He pauses, considering what to say next, which words to choose so that, for once, they should come out the way he intends for them to. So that they won’t seem too harsh or too clumsy. In the end, he decides to say the truth. He has nothing left to lose and nothing left to hide and if he’s shaking a bit, if his throat is a bit tight, if he can’t find the strength to look at Rafa and decides to settle his gaze on his clasped hands, well. He takes in a breath.

“I kissed you because I’m in love with you,” (and saying it doesn’t hurt at all). “I did it, you know? The whole confronting the past thing. I went back to all those places, Paris and New York and London and like, I couldn’t always get in but I did try to mourn. Properly. I’m not sure it worked, but that’s what I realized there, I guess. I’m not sure it’s ever going to work, you know? I’m not sure there’s an end to this kind of pain.”

Roger pauses, glancing at Rafa. And maybe this was a terrible idea because Rafa is looking at him like each one of Roger’s words is hurting him, his features distorted by raw, naked pain. Roger forces himself to carry on, no matter what this is doing to them. It might be the only time they talk about it and he doesn’t want to have any regrets. He doesn’t want to leave Rafa wondering.

“I’m not sure I’m ever going to be… what I was. Who I was.” (Rafa telling him how he illuminated everything when he stepped out on a tennis court, holding a racket in his hand and thinking _I’m good at this, I’m fucking great at this,_ and knowing, knowing that there was a place for him in the world) “But I decided that this is enough for me. That I can live with it. I didn’t kiss you because I thought you had left, I kissed you because I thought I had missed my chance to tell you this. That I’m in love with you.”

He looks up at Rafa again. The grocery bags are still on the floor, next to him, and it would be comical if there wasn’t so much at stake. Roger kind of wants to close his eyes while waiting for Rafa’s verdict but he can’t. He owes Rafa this much. The pain hasn’t left Rafa’s features but there is something else, now. Something akin to hope.

“You love me?” Rafa asks, his tone cautious– as if he needs to make sure that he is understanding this perfectly.

“Yes.”

“And you want to stay. You are not leaving again?”

“Yes.”

Rafa’s expression morphs into one of intense focus as he examines Roger with a careful gaze. This is something Roger can withstand without flinching, without wavering. This is familiar territory. After a few minutes, Rafa seems to have found what he’s searching for because he takes a step forward, closing the distance between them.

“Can I?” he asks.

“Yes.”

When Rafa kisses him, it has nothing to do with this first, desperate kiss. It’s soft, Rafa’s lips barely touching Roger’s but not in hesitation or shyness. It’s a question. Roger parts his mouth a little and lets Rafa take control of the kiss, because this is about what Rafa needs. About giving him reassurance. Roger lets himself be kissed, Rafa’s lips getting more insistent, opening his, and suddenly it’s not about reassurance anymore. Rafa is kissing him exactly like Roger likes to be kissed, like he knows what Roger wants better than Roger himself, like he has thought about it and maybe he _has_. Their tongues touch and it’s too much, too intense. Roger breaks the kiss, resting his forehead against Rafa’s.  

He opens his eyes to find that his hands are clutching Rafa’s shirt. Rafa doesn’t seem to mind.

“I love you,” Rafa says, their mouths still so close Roger can almost taste the words. He’d never thought three words could be so blunt yet so delicate. “I want you to stay,” he adds. “I always want you to stay, no?”

And Roger doesn’t know what to respond because he kind of knew but it’s different to hear it out loud, to hear Rafa choose this, choose him. He kind of knew but there were thousands of doubts, of reasons why not to. A part of him still wants to argue until he’s sure that Rafa won’t change his mind, wants to say _– sometimes I wake up with my fingers gripping something that isn’t there and I know I’ve dreamt of playing; I’m fragments of what I used to be and those will never fit quite right again; how can you want who I am now when you remember who I was?_ But Rafa is looking at him like he’s seeing Roger as something whole and it’s enough to quench Roger’s doubts for now.

Roger smiles. “I guess I’m staying then.” He takes a step back, unsure of what to do next. “What should we…?”

“I need to put this in the fridge, no?” Rafa says, casting a somewhat dejected glance at the grocery bags.

“Right. Sure.”

Roger has waited almost two decades and he can very well wait a bit longer. He follows Rafa in the kitchen, not sure where to settle his gaze. There are a few drops of sweat glistening on the back of Rafa’s neck and, not for the first time, Roger wonders what they would taste like, if Rafa would allow him to lick there, to press his tongue against the skin and just – He averts his eyes and tries to focus on Rafa’s shoulders, which is not helping at all because Roger’s always had a thing for Rafa’s shoulders and god –

“Roger?” Rafa asks. He’s standing near the kitchen door now and, Roger notices, the groceries have vanished. Or been put in the fridge. “Are you coming?” Rafa holds out his hand, one eyebrow raised. Roger flushes and Rafa laughs and laughs and laughs.

Roger answers yes anyway.

***

Under Rafa’s hands, Roger remembers that he has a body.

It’s late afternoon and the light falling through the window is making the room glow gold. Rafa’s body above him is solid and real and Roger wants to feel its weight against his, but they’re not quite touching. Instead, Rafa is kissing him the way he did in the entryway, soft and careful and insistent, one hand cupping Roger’s jaw, tilting his head up, and Roger can’t help but want more. Rafa’s other hand is moving under Roger’s shirt, drawing senseless patterns on his skin and with each touch, Roger trembles a bit and remembers that he has a body.

For five years he’s discarded it as something not worth his time anymore, something that only needed to be fed and that needed rest at regular intervals. If it wasn’t playing tennis anymore, then what use was it to him?

Rafa, though, touches Roger’s body like he can’t believe he’s allowed to, like it’s something to be savoured and Roger is a bit faint with it. After a few minutes, Rafa breaks their gentle kissing, kneeling between Roger’s parted legs. His hands grip the hem of Roger’s shirt, starting to push it up, and Roger wants to say _yes_ , wants to say _please_ but what he says instead is,

“I’ve lost weight.”

Rafa’s hands still.

Roger continues, cringing but unable to stop himself. “My body isn’t. It’s not what it used to be.”

Rafa lets go of Roger’s shirt and crawls up a bit so that they are face to face, their bodies aligned. Roger glances at Rafa’s shoulders, the power they still carry visible through Rafa’s light shirt, at the lean lines of Rafa’s torso. Despite the years, he has never lost the sheer physicality that used to make the whole world catch its breath when he played. Roger was always more fascinated by it than envious of it and he thinks now that maybe the fact that Rafa could keep hold of his body and that Roger couldn’t says something about the two of them. Something about the way they had chosen to inhabit this new world – Rafa grounded and solid, broken but unwavering in his belief that he could overcome this if he tried hard enough and Roger, unanchored and adrift, searching for an absolution that didn’t exist.

Roger looks back up at Rafa’s face to see that Rafa is frowning, unsure of how to respond to Roger’s outburst.

“I know,” he says eventually. “It does not matter, no?” One of his hands goes back to Roger’s shirt and this time Roger doesn’t say anything, just raises his head so that Rafa can get rid of it. Then, Rafa takes care of his own shirt. He presses a few, light kisses against the crook of Roger’s neck and Roger arches into it. “I want you,” Rafa continues, tilting his head up to let Roger see that he’s being sincere.

He’s dishevelled, mouth a bit red, and there is this raw quality to his gaze, something dark, hungry. He says he wants Roger and Roger believes him. 

“And you want me,” Rafa adds, the barest hint of a question in his voice.

“I do. I have. For so long,” Roger answers, as Rafa settles back between his legs.

“Tell me,” he asks, fingers hovering over the fly of Roger’s jeans.

There are so many times, so many moments he could choose but it’s this one that comes back to Roger and he remembers sitting in a _café_ in Paris, pen in hand, unable to put into words the feeling of loss he was experiencing, the regret, the wish for things to be different.

“The last time we played in Paris. You were wearing blue and I wanted you so much I was half mad with it.”

“I remember,” Rafa says, voice soft. He unzips Roger’s jeans and Roger raises his hips a little to help Rafa remove them, along with his boxers. And then he’s naked and it’s _fine_. Rafa’s thumbs trace one line down Roger’s thighs before going back up.

“Let me,” Rafa says, lips very close to Roger’s cock. It’s something between a demand and a plea. He’s not just asking for permission, he’s asking for Roger to trust him. And Roger does.

“Yeah.”  

He keeps his eyes fixed on Rafa, one hand in Rafa’s hair, the other clinging to the sheets and opens his legs a bit more. It’s a vulnerable position and Roger should feel exposed, should feel pinned under the intensity of Rafa’s gaze on him but instead he feels light, like he belongs to his body and his body belongs to him.

Rafa takes him in his mouth and Roger lets out a breathy moan. Rafa’s mouth is warm and wet and it’s everything Roger had fantasized about. Roger lets go of Rafa’s hair and his hand blindly searches Rafa’s, resting against Roger’s hipbone, holding him in place. He entwines their fingers, crushing Rafa’s a bit but Rafa just hums in approval. Roger closes his eyes under the rush of pleasure, letting his head fall back against the pillow.

And then there is nothing but the sensation of Rafa’s mouth on him, of Rafa’s tongue against his skin, of Rafa’s hand in his. Roger gives himself to him, completely, without holding anything back. He surrenders.

When Roger comes, his body shakes and shakes (Roger remembers he has one) and Rafa holds him through it, mouth against his temple, whispering things Roger doesn’t understand but doesn’t need to.

***

After Roger has calmed down, it’s his turn to go down on Rafa and it’s just as good and satisfying, albeit in a different way. It’s been ages since he last gave someone a blow job but it’s the kind of thing you don’t forget and every trace of nervousness Roger might have felt evaporates when he sees how beautifully Rafa responds to him, how eager and unabashed he is in taking his pleasure from Roger’s mouth.

Maybe Rafa has thought about the best way to kiss Roger, maybe he hasn’t, but Roger _has_ thought about the best way to blow Rafa, has mapped it in his mind countless of times, has imagined himself on his knees anywhere, everywhere, exposed in the middle of a court or in the privacy of a hotel room. This – a bedroom, a bed, nice sheets – might be a bit tamed compared to some of Roger’s fantasies but it’s perfect because it’s real. It’s the two of them, stripped of any pretence, laid bare and raw. This is what Roger has been hungering for.

Rafa comes and his body doesn’t shatter the way Roger’s did, it takes in wave of pleasure after wave of pleasure, accepting them, relishing them as Roger watches, enraptured.

They rearrange themselves on the bed so that they’re facing each other, legs entangled, Roger’s hand resting against Rafa’s chest. They’re sweaty and in need of a shower but Roger can’t bring himself to care. Rafa’s skin under his palm is hot and tanned and perfect and Roger kisses it, eliciting a laugh from Rafa.

“I love your skin,” he says and he does.

“I see that,” Rafa replies, satisfied.

“It’s very smooth.”

“It smells,” Rafa says, scrunching his nose. “I need a shower.”

He gets up and Roger takes it all in, the lines of his naked body, his effortless grace as he walks out, throwing a smile at Roger before disappearing on the other side of the door, the intimacy of this simple moment. Roger aches with something he can’t define.

Can you want something too much? He has wanted trophies and titles and has sacrificed a lot to get them, he has wanted his name to mean something and it used to. He knows want and understands the things you are ready to do to satisfy it. But this is different.

Now that Roger has had a taste of it, of Rafa being his, it seems almost inconceivable that he should have waited for so long. As soon as the lets the thought form in his mind, guilt settles back in his throat, and it’s as familiar as breathing. It’s pointless to review the reasons why they haven’t done this before – Roger knows them all, has gone over them again and again. Still, the ferocity of the want coiling in his belly, of his need for more, for an entire life of this, forces himself to wonder. What would have happened if he had been a bit less careful before? If they had started something? What would he have been ready to do to keep doing it?

“What is it?” Rafa asks from the entrance of the bedroom and Roger jumps in surprise. “Sorry,” Rafa adds. “You have this look…” He makes a vague gesture with his free hand, the other one busy towelling his hair.

This isn’t what Roger had envisioned doing when Rafa came back but they can’t really avoid having this conversation.

“Come here,” he says. Rafa drops the towel at the end of the bed and settles next to Roger.

Roger rubs his temples and brushes back a lock of his hair, trying to give himself some time to gather his thoughts. Rafa is silent, waiting for him to speak.

“I kind of lied to you when I said I never thought about what it would entail for me to be with a man. Like, before.” Even though he wanted Rafa next to him, Roger can’t quite muster the courage to hold his gaze. This is the thing he is the most ashamed of and it’s one thing to admit it to himself but telling Rafa who, despite everything, has always had such faith in him fucking hurts. “Or maybe I didn’t lie but I didn’t tell the whole truth. Because sometimes it’s hard to…”

“Is fine,” Rafa says, interrupting Roger’s ramblings. “I understand. Tell me now, no?”

“Right.” Roger exhales. “So I thought about it. About what it would be like for… For us to be together. And sometimes,” One of Rafa’s hands settles on his thigh, his thumb caressing Roger’s skin in a slow, soothing motion. “Sometimes I wondered what it would be like if we weren’t who we were. If there was no tennis. So when this thing happened to us and you were the only one who remembered too I thought maybe this is my fault.”

“You can’t change the world, Roger,” Rafa says and the sadness tainting his voice makes Roger look up. There is sorrow on his face but no pity, no resentment. As if Roger’s guilt and shame could be understood, forgiven. “Even if you are very good at tennis.”

Roger lets out a watery laugh. “I get that. But sometimes it’s easier to think you’ve caused your own misery than accept it just happened to you, you know? Because at least you have someone to blame, even if it’s just yourself.”

“You are still doing this? Blaming yourself?”

“No. Well, not all the time. Not as much as before.”

“Good,” Rafa says.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I was doing better. But it’s all new to me, you know? I’m not sure how to do it.”

“The sex?” Rafa deadpans. “Was okay.” And Roger laughs again.

“Just okay?”

“Maybe a bit better than okay,” Rafa concedes with a smile before his expression turns serious again. Right.

“I’m not sure how to not feel guilty. And angry. How… How do you do it?”

“I don’t,” Rafa says. “Some days I wake up and I’m angry, no? But a lot of the times I wake up and I’m not angry. That’s all what we can do.”

“Live for the good days?” 

“Yes,” Rafa says.

It seems simple, the way Rafa says it but Roger knows it isn’t and can’t help but admire the force of Rafa’s will, the sheer strength of his character.

“Okay,” Roger answers. He has tried everything else. He might as well try this.

“And now, you wake up with me,” Rafa adds.

And yes, Roger will. As long as Rafa wants him to.

*** 

They don’t end up getting a lot of sleep. They doze for a bit before going back to exploring each other’s bodies and this second time is slower, softer perhaps. Roger focuses less on how his body responds to Rafa’s hands and Rafa’s to his and more on how well their bodies work together, the way they fit.

When dawn starts breaking through the sky, grey and pink, Rafa falls asleep and Roger doesn’t. He watches Rafa, curled on his side, turned away from him. There are scars on his lower back, a physical reminder that they are not crazy, that they did live this other life and Roger traces them with his fingertips, feather light. He shifts closer to Rafa, kissing one shoulder blade and whispers, because he hasn’t said it like this yet and he wants to taste the words on his tongue, to see how they fit in his mouth,

“I love you.”

Rafa stirs and Roger waits, unblinking, but he doesn’t wake up.

Around eight, Roger gives up on sleeping and decides to go make breakfast. They didn’t eat anything the night before and he is starving. He is still staring at the contents of the fridge, baffled, when Rafa joins him.

“Good morning,” Rafa says, coming behind him and kissing his cheek, one hand curling against Roger’s hip. Roger leans back against him.

“Good morning,” he replies.

“You making breakfast?”

“Well, I was going to but I got distracted. What exactly were you planning on doing with this?” Roger asks, pointing at the random products stored in the fridge. He’s pretty sure cucumbers, prawns and jam have nothing to do on the same plate.

Rafa laughs. “New recipe, is a secret. I can make it tonight.”

“Well, if this coaching thing doesn’t work out I guess you can always open an experimental restaurant.”

“I don’t think a lot of people come,” Rafa says, letting go of Roger’s hip and taking a step back, leaving Roger to it.

“They would if you opened it in New York,” Roger says. He ends up selecting the only thing in the fridge that seems safe, eggs, and gets to work. Cooking is not his greatest strength but he can make a decent omelette. 

“My mother. She gives me the new recipe,” Rafa says, and Roger almost drops the egg he is holding on the floor.

“Did she?” Roger asks, not daring to turn around. Instead he breaks the egg in the bowl in front of him and waits for Rafa’s answer.

“Yeah. I have been talking to her. To my family. Is not easy but is good, I think.”

“Toni?”

“No.” He amends, “Not yet.”

Rogers nods and doesn’t push further. He has been toying with the idea of contacting Mirka and he knows how difficult it is, what Rafa’s doing. He finishes his omelettes and they move outside, in the garden. Roger avoids looking at the row of cypress trees he knows is hiding the court and concentrates on his food.

“This is good,” Rafa says, and Roger thinks he sounds prouder than he ought to. He isn’t that bad at cooking. “Maybe you can help with the restaurant,” Rafa adds and, right. He’s making fun of him.

“Sure, I’ll do the decorating,” he says, to which Rafa only replies with a snort.

Truth is, he has no idea what he is going to do. He hasn’t planned anything in years, except for going from one place to another and the horizon of his future was always limited to the next plane, the next city. The next visit to Rafa. He has a future now and it’s a bit vertiginous to realize it. He has months, years ahead of him.   

What did Odysseus do?  Well, he was a king. Kings must have things to keep them occupied, Roger supposes. Or maybe he spent years in his palace waiting for another war, another reason to go away, back to the sea.

Roger looks at Rafa in front of him, chewing his omelette, at the garden, at the morning.

The rays of the sun are both sharpening and softening Rafa’s features, if such a thing is possible, and when he notices Roger staring he offers him a smile that makes his cheeks dimple, his eyes crinkling.

 He has a future now, with one person. Figuring out the rest can wait for a bit.

***

Roger spends the next few months adjusting to his new life.

Some of it is easy.

Being together is easy. Things barely change: they still talk and laugh like before except that there is no weight of things unsaid hanging over them, ready to crush them should they make one misstep. Roger doesn’t have to hold back anymore, to always be aware of the distance between them, to avert his eyes when he realizes he’s been staring for too long. They have always orbited around each other and colliding, at last, is the most natural thing.

The sex is easy, for the most part. There is the inherent awkwardness to it, in the beginning, but Roger doesn’t care and neither does Rafa and it disappears soon enough. At first, after years of self-imposed chastity, every time is like this first night, a rediscovery of Roger’s own body, a reclaiming. Then Roger gets used to it and it becomes less of something shattering and more of something familiar which is _good_. Roger enjoys the simple intimacy that comes along with familiarity. He wants Rafa all the time and he knows that it will lessen at some point but, right now, he gives in to it and gladly.

That’s not the most satisfying part, though. What Roger has been craving all along are the little details, the ones that can only be known by building a life together. He learns them all, with the same intensity he once put into learning how to travel the world and leaving behind him who he had been. He learns the sound of Rafa’s voice just after waking up, the way his eyes blink open, his slight pout at having to get out of bed. He learns the sound of Rafa’s voice just before falling asleep, the way his eyes close, eyelashes forming shadows on his cheeks, the steady rhythm of his breathing lulling Roger to sleep. He learns all the things in between, from dawn till dusk and again, and again.

Some of it is hard.

Now that he remembers he has a body, Roger starts feeling the loss in a physical way. It’s not just a dull, empty ache, it’s not a bruise that won’t heal, it’s something that grips him at the oddest moments, seemingly tearing his body from the inside, and when it stops it leaves him breathless and panting, his muscles sore, his limbs _hurting_. It’s not mental, there is none of the anxiety or panic Roger is all too well acquainted with but when he tries searching for what it might be he doesn’t find any answer. So he accepts it. He learns not to dread those moments and to accept that the body needs to heal from invisible injuries too. The crises frighten Rafa but there’s not much he can do to help Roger except massaging his tired muscles when it’s over and hoping, along with Roger, that the next one won’t be as bad.

Sometimes, Roger wakes up in the middle of the night, gasping and he doesn’t remember where he is. He lies back, taking in all the details specific to this bedroom, the cracks in the ceiling, the curtains’ shadow on the floor; he listens to the sounds Rafa is making in his sleep and waits until he is sure this is real, this isn’t another dream, that he isn’t in a nameless hotel room, miles away from Rafa, alone.

There is such a thing as having to recover from the wounds you inflicted on yourself.

Along with the good things, Roger gets to know the bad things. Rafa has horrible, violent nightmares, which he didn’t know about because Rafa didn’t tell him. They fight about it, once and only once, before Roger concedes that no, there’s not much he could have done about Rafa’s nightmares when he spent the better part of the past five years on the other side of the world and that yes, it’s true, Rafa doesn’t have to tell him everything. Roger still researches what he can do to help and ends up buying a dozen or so different types of tea reputed for having calming and soothing properties. Rafa doesn’t like tea and turns a bit green every time Roger brews some but he still drinks it. There is no way to say if it’s the tea or Roger’s presence next to him, each night, every night, but the nightmares become fewer even if they don’t disappear.

Rafa has bad days. When it happens, he cleans and cleans even if there is nothing to clean until his hands are rubbed red and on the verge of bleeding. Roger leaves him to it and doesn’t say a thing.

They don’t talk about the memories. Their previous ritual lies between them, discarded. There is a tacit understanding between them that they need to stay in the present, to put their efforts into adjusting to this new state of things, to them being together. So they forget about the past, for a little while.

Then, there are Rafa’s lessons. The first time Rafa lets him know that his student will come during the afternoon, Roger leaves the house and doesn’t come back before early evening, just to be sure. It turns out to be of no use at all because he spends the entire time hearing non-existent tennis balls flying through the air. He’s not sure why it scares him so much. He isn’t envious of Rafa, nor does he resent him for being able to do something Roger can’t. But maybe it’s not so much about what Roger fears he can’t do and more about what he fears he might be tempted to do. And he isn’t ready.

When he comes back home that night, ready to ask Rafa how it went and to show that even if he can’t stay in the house he is happy for Rafa, he finds Rafa glowing in a way Roger had forgotten he could. Roger swallows. He has missed seeing Rafa like this, has missed it so much and god –

“What?” Rafa asks but Roger just shakes his head and kisses him hard, his nails digging in the flesh of Rafa’s back and Rafa surrenders with a small whimper. Then Roger takes his hand and drags him into the bedroom. He wants it rough but he also wants it slow and somehow Rafa seems to understand what he needs perfectly. He lets his body go pliant under Roger’s hands and doesn’t speak except to answer _yes_ to Roger asking for permission and Roger is half mad with loss and grief and gratitude that Rafa is here. He comes, burying his head in the crook of Rafa’s neck, eyes shut, refusing to cry.

After that, Roger stays in the house when Rafa gives his lessons.

One night, Rafa finds Roger in front of his laptop, looking at flights.

“You are going somewhere?” he asks, in a cautious tone.

It will probably take more than a few months before Rafa completely lets go of his fear of Roger leaving, just as it will take a while for Roger to let go of his fear of coming back to an empty house.

“I need to go back to Switzerland,” Roger says. “Pack the rest of my stuff, empty my flat, you know? And I need… I need to talk to Mirka.”

“Oh,” Rafa says. “For long?”

“I don’t know,” Roger answers. It mostly depends on Mirka. “I was thinking… Maybe you could come with me? If you want.”

Rafa gives him a look laced with tenderness and pride. “Okay.”  

Roger nods, relief obstructing his throat, and Rafa presses one tiny kiss at the corner of his mouth.

***

They agree to meet in a restaurant, on neutral ground.

It’s a shock to see her. Not because of how she has changed but because of how she hasn’t and Roger has to remind himself that he doesn’t know her. That they only had five months together. The shock doesn’t lessen. She strides, purposeful, toward the table where he’s sitting waiting for her and he fights the impulse to look down at the menu in front of him, to hide. She sits down and a waiter appears, bringing her another menu. She thanks him with a nod and a smile before turning her gaze on Roger, evaluating.

“You look good,” Mirka says after a while. “I was half expecting for you to show up skinny and unshaved.”

It’s an accurate description of how he had appeared at Rafa’s doorstep five months ago and it rattles him, a bit.

She sighs. “So, why are we here?”

He opens his mouth to answer and all the words he had prepared before coming disappear, leaving his mind blank, vacated. How to do this?

“Did you choose?” the waiter asks, reappearing from seemingly nowhere.

“Yes, I’ll have the salmon tartare please,” Mirka says, even though she hasn’t even glanced at the menu. Roger orders the same thing because he couldn’t care less about food right now. When the waiter has left, he tries again.

“I wanted to see you. To apologize.”

Mirka’s stare is stony. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry,” Roger says, aware of how trite the words sound. How insufficient. “For disappearing and not giving any news. For leaving you alone with the kids.”

“For five years.”

“Yes. For five years.” There is nothing else to do but acknowledge it because it’s the truth and he can’t undo what he has done.

“You know,” Mirka starts, tone thoughtful, “I blamed myself for a long time for not seeing how bad it was, those last few months. You weren’t talking to your parents or any of our friends, you were barely talking to me. You quit your job. All you seemed to care about was the kids and I thought that it was just a bad phase, an early midlife crisis or something like that. But it wasn’t just that, was it?”

The waiter brings both of their plates, depositing them on the table with a flourish.

“No,” Roger says. “It was… I was in a bad place. For a very long time. But I’m doing better now.”

“It would be easier for me to understand if you could explain what happened,” Mirka remarks.

But he can’t. Even now, there is no way for him to say _, one day I woke up and my world had ended and, at the time, I needed everything that reminded me of what I had lost to end too_. If he could, he would tell her that what he did wasn’t against her, that it wasn’t against their children but that it was against him. That leaving everything behind was both his only means of survival and a penance, his rightful ordeal.

“Can you accept,” he says and it’s a terrible thing to utter, “that it would make even less sense if I explained it to you?”

She doesn’t answer. She digs her fork into her tartare before bringing it to her mouth and they don’t speak for a while. Roger stares at his food.

“I’m not sure I can,” Mirka says. “But I’m not here just for me. What about the kids, Roger?”

“I want to see them,” he replies immediately. “If you’re okay with that.”

She lets her fork fall on the table and gives him another one of those harsh, evaluating stares.

“I have one condition.”

“Sure, anything.”

“You can’t leave again.”

“I won’t,” he says. He doesn’t even have to think about it.

But Mirka shakes her head. “No, I don’t think you’re understanding me. You _can’t_ leave Roger. So I need you to think about it and think about it hard. If there is even the tiniest doubt in your mind that you can’t do this, the tiniest possibility that you might one day leave again I need you to be honest with me and tell me. I won’t let my children lose their father twice.”

“I won’t,” he repeats, voice steady.

“Okay then,” she agrees. Some of the tension she had been carrying seems to leave her and she leans back against her chair, the set of her shoulders more relaxed. “So, how are you doing?”

“I’m doing good, I think. Things are better.”

“Is there someone?” she asks and he almost chokes on the sip of water he was swallowing.

“How?” he splutters.

She laughs, something bright and joyous and he doesn’t care at all that she’s laughing at him. “I know you,” she says. “You would never look this well-fed on your own.”

He grimaces but there’s not much he can say to defend himself. “His name is Rafa,” he says. Mirka frowns and he wonders, for an instant, if she’s remembering the one time he asked her about him but it passes and her features settle back into a neutral expression.

“I’m glad for you,” is all she replies.

They continue chatting for a bit. He asks questions about her life, about what she’s been doing and he finds himself happy to learn that things are going well for her. She doesn’t have anyone in her life but she doesn’t need to nor does she have time for it. She has a business to take care of and four children to raise and isn’t that enough? Roger agrees that it is.  

“So, I’ll come tomorrow then?” he asks as they’re standing in front of the restaurant, ready to part ways.

“Yes, sure.”

“Are they… Are they very angry with me?”

She gives him a glance he can’t decipher. “What do you think?” she replies. Then she sighs, pushing a strand of her hair back behind her ear. “They remember you. Be glad of that. For a while, I feared that it if you ever came back it would be too late. Especially for the boys.”

He nods, words caught in his throat, and watches her leave.

They remember him. It’s more than what he has the right to ask for.

***

Rafa is spread out on the sofa, watching TV, when Roger comes back to the flat. Roger leaves his jacket and his keys on the living room table and comes to join him, finding a bit of space between Rafa’s spread legs. This flat was designed for one person to live in it and the small size of the sofa is a prime example of that.

“So it went good?” Rafa asks, putting one arm around Roger’s shoulders and bringing him closer to him.

“I, yeah. How do you know that?”

“You look… less sad,” Rafa says, grimacing the way he does when the word he’s just used isn’t exactly the one he was searching for.

“I’m relieved,” Roger says. “She’s agreed to let me see the kids. Tomorrow.”

“I’m happy for you,” Rafa says and Roger shifts a bit so that he can look at Rafa’s face. He does seem happy for Roger but there’s something else clouding his eyes.

“What is it?” Roger asks.

Rafa hesitates, as if he’s not sure Roger wants to hear what he has to say.

“You can tell me,” he insists.

“Sometimes I think this is easier for me, no? What happened to us. With all my injuries… There were many times I think maybe this is the end. So when it happened I was not…” He pauses, weighting the words. “I was not surprised. I was sad and angry but not surprised. But you…” 

But Roger. But Roger had thought he’d always have more time, even at the very end, when he knew there wasn’t much of it left. Rafa, though, had always been running after time.  

Roger closes his eyes, letting his head fall against Rafa’s shoulder. His body is bent in an awkward and uncomfortable position and his back will probably make him pay for it later but right now he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care.

“Thank you,” he whispers against Rafa’s shirt.

“Why?” Rafa asks, but his voice is very soft and he doesn’t really seem to be expecting an answer. Roger has none. Or Roger has too many.

There are as many ways to deal with hurt and grief as there are people, Roger knows that. Some scream and scream and break whatever they can in their rage, sometimes themselves. Some become quiet, the weight of their silence an armour between them and the world. Some put as much distance as they can between them and whatever crushed them, thinking maybe if no one sees the broken parts it’ll be as if they never existed, as if none of it ever happened. What everybody searches for, though, is a path on which to tread – a path on which to crawl – so that you can go on, living and breathing despite it all.

This is Rafa’s gift to Roger: saying it was okay to hurt differently.

And, on an uncomfortable sofa, in Rafa’s arms, Roger breathes.

***

**_coda_ **

Tenerife _is_ a beautiful island.

The hotel they booked in Santa Cruz is fancier than the ones Roger used to stay at but not as fancy as those they both spent so many years of their lives in. It’s not so much of a compromise between the life that was once theirs and the one Roger imposed on himself for so long as it is a third path. The one Roger has chosen to tread on.

Rafa isn’t very enthusiastic when it comes to Roger’s kind of exploring. The goal, according to him, is to relax, not get blisters. But Roger misses walking all day long, pushing himself to the limit so they agree to go visit the inevitable landmarks in the morning and to spend their afternoons at the beach.

They start their day by eating their breakfast on the _plaza de Espana_ before wandering around the city, admiring the outdoor sculptures. When the heat gets too strong, they take refuge in museums. Then they have lunch and sleep for an hour or two before heading to the beach. The ocean waters are different from the ones Roger is now used to. The scent of salt is stronger, sharper, the waves more violent. It’s less indulgent, in appearance at least. Roger takes it all in.

“We should come back next year, with the kids,” Roger says on their last night.

They’re walking down the beach, deserted at this hour, and it’s fitting that they should be the only people out there, facing the limitless ocean. As if they were the last people on earth. Or the last of their kind.

“No,” Rafa answers. “They come to Mallorca first. Then, maybe, Tenerife.”

Roger laughs. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

Rafa seems ready to argue his point and Roger raises his hands in surrender. He doesn’t really care as long as he gets to spend time with Rafa and his children. His relationship with them is difficult, and maybe it always will be. More so with the girls than with the boys because they had been too young to really understand what had happened, too young to truly miss him. The girls had been old enough. It doesn’t matter. Roger is grateful for every tiny bit of time with them he gets to have.  

They sit down on the sand, their shoulders brushing and it brings back memories of many similar nights, he and Rafa trading memories back and forth, staring at the sea, contemplating their loss. They don’t really do that anymore. Roger remembers Rafa and Rafa remembers him. It’s enough to know it.

“Do you ever wonder,” Roger starts, recalling all those nights making him pensive, “if we traded places with other versions of us? If they’re out there, somewhere, living our lives?”

“Maybe,” Rafa says, indulging him.

“If they do, I hope they’re happy,” Roger says and he does.

Rafa offers him a smile but doesn’t reply. “I gonna go try the water,” he says instead.

“You’re going to freeze.”

“Is fine. Just my feet, no?” Rafa says before getting up and starting to walk toward the ocean. Roger doesn’t move.

He stares at Rafa. It sometimes feels like he has spent a great deal of his life staring at Rafa, ever since he first saw him, white bandana and bright _bright_ smile. Maybe there _is_ such a thing as wanting something, someone too much but, right now, Roger can’t bring himself to be bothered by it.

So Roger has wanted trophies and he remembers the weight of them in his arms, the sensation of the cool, solid metal against his bare hands. He has wanted his name to be recognized and once upon a time it was, it was part of a story he thought would continue being told long after he was gone. He has also wanted a family and this man and not all those things were compatible. He had to lose some to gain some and he will never know why. No one will ever explain to him what happened.

It still hurts.

There is no ending to this kind of pain, only a lessening of it. Roger has learnt not to think about it too much, that the bad days get fewer and fewer. There are some things you can’t heal from and that’s fine. It doesn’t prevent him from living.

He still dreams of empty tennis courts and wakes up to the sounds of balls flying through the air, his fingers gripping an invisible racket when he has yet to touch a real one. He doesn’t know if he ever will. There are other things he can do, like getting on the other side of a row of cypress trees to watch Rafa give his lessons to an ever-growing number of kids. There are few things that make Roger happier than seeing Rafa on a tennis court.

So maybe this is what happens after Odysseus returns to Ithaca – he’s the happiest he can be. And if he ever dreams of war or going back to the sea, it’s easy to forget about it when he wakes up to a clear blue sky, to a morning brimming with possibilities.

“Roger, come on,” Rafa says. He’s standing with his feet in the water, laughing at the waves crashing against his calves. “The water is good.”

Roger is pretty sure that’s a lie but he gets up anyway, ready to follow Rafa’s lead.

In his pocket, the key to his and Rafa’s house.


End file.
